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Life in Old Cambridge 



LIFE IN 
OLD CAMBRIDGE 

Illustrations of English History 
M. E. MONCKTON JONES 

With Preface by G. K. CHESTERTON 



MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS 



CAMBRIDGE 

W. HEFFER & SONS LTD. 

1920 



+ ^erO 



U 



» \j Zjxj lo 



Contents 



CHAP. 




PAGE 




Illustrations 


- vii 




Author's Preface - 


ix 




Introduction - 


- xiii 


I. 


The Grassland Strip 


- 1 


II. 


The Romans - 


- 15 


III. 


The Province - 


- 21 


IV. 


Saxon Times - 


- 31 


V. 


The Danes 


- 55 


VI. 


The Norman Years 


- 74 


VII. 


Mediaeval Cambridge 


- 86 


VIII. 


Monks and Friars - 


- 100 



Illustrations 



PAGE 

Map of Fen and Forest - - - Frontispiece 

Compiled by L. Grimes in the style of the 17th 
Century explorers) 

Late Celtic Vessel and Kimmeridge Shale 

Urn 7 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Gold Armilla and Process of Making it - 8 

(From photo in Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Torque, Spearhead, Celt and Celt Moulds 9 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Fleam Dyke 12 

(From a photograph) 

British Shield 15 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Bronze of a Roman Soldier - - - 18 

(From Babington's Ancient Cambridgeshire, p. 77) 

Roman Pottery 24 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Roman Fibula and Knife 25 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Anglo-Saxon Seaxe, and Bill 34 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Anglo-Saxon Fibula and Clasps 35 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Old Cottages now standing at Cherryhinton 36 

(From sketch by P. Johnstone) 
vii 



Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



North Doorway of Our Lady's Chapel, 

Stourbridge 40 

Saxon Vessel. Roman Vessels 46 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Saxon Brooch 51 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Saxon Spindle -Whorls and Cloth - - 52 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Saxon Disc Ornament 63 

(Camb. Arch. Museum) 

Tower of St. Benet's 67 

(From a sketch by P. Johnstone) 

Castle Hill - - 87 

(From old illustrations of Cambridge and Bramber) 

Thatched Church 90 

(From a sketch by P. Johnstone) 

Map of Cambridge in 1300 - - - 101 

(From J. W. Clark, Ecclesia de Barnwell, facing 
p. 336) 

Plan of Cambridge Castle - - 114 

(From print made for S. Hooper, 1776) 

View of Cambridge Castle - - - - 117 

(From print made for S. Hooper, 1776) 

Plan of Stourbridge Fair - 128 

(From History and Antiquities of Barnwell, Cam- 
bridge Free Library) 



Author's Preface 

This sketch of early life in Cambridge has 
been compiled in reply to a want expressed 
in the elementary schools of the town. The 
many admirable volumes existing on Cam- 
bridge have been written by scholars for 
adult and educated readers. They are un- 
happily for the most part inaccessible and 
unintelligible to the children. Yet a know- 
ledge of the factors and the actors which have 
made up the life of the past is the best means 
of arousing that community sentiment on 
which can be based the co-operation of good 
citizens in the future. 

East Anglia plays, perhaps, the next 
greatest part to London in the Middle Ages 
especially in trade and political intercourse 
with Flanders and the Empire, and all this is 
reflected in the life of the town, under Saxons, 
Danes, Normans and Angevins. To give the 
actual writs and regulations of those rulers 
to a boy, who hardly understands their 
wording is more worth doing than it seems, 
for it is often to awaken in him for the first 
time a sense that History describes the lives 
of real people whose influence may still affect 
his life to-day. For Local History consists of 



author's preface 



detail, and it is detail, not generalities, which 
a child can grasp, and about which his keen 
imagination loves to play. The legends of 
Cnut, of Britnoth, of Hereward ; the doings 
of Friar or Canon, of Sheriff Picot or King 
John give them actual dramatis personse for 
the stage of their constant mental plays, but 
these characters cannot be given without some 
ordered background. 

To sketch such a background without 
offending against the dim truths of Archeology 
or contracting the due sequence of time ; to 
write it in language which will not flow un- 
heeded over the child's head, involves diffi- 
culties which those will understand who have 
attempted it, and which constantly lay the 
writer open to charges of inaccuracy, the more 
just in this case since she is qualified neither 
by long residence nor special study of Cam- 
bridge, but has had to build on the work of 
others. In stay of scholars' judgment, she 
would urge that they should speedily meet 
the need with more authority and simplicity. 

Most valuable help has been drawn from 
Cooper's "Annals of Cambridge," Stubb's 
" Cambridge," Conybeare's " Cambridge- 
shire," and Mr. A. Gray's " Cambridge," and 
his pamphlets in the Cambridge Antiquarian 
Society's publications. To Mr. Gray I am 
more especially grateful for his great kindness 
m reading the manuscript and putting me 
right on important points. I rejoice to have 



author's preface xi 

this opportunity of thanking Mr. Harold 
Peake for similar help in Chapter I. ; the 
Cambridge Antiquarian Society and Baron 
von Hugel for their kindness in permitting me 
to use illustrations from their library and 
copies of objects in the Archaeological Museum, 
the Committee of the Free Library for the 
plan of Barnwell Fair ; Father Cuthbert for 
the use of an extract from his work on " The 
coming of the Friars Minor," and Messrs. 
Bowes and Bowes for the arrangement by 
which it has been possible to include passages 
from J. W. Clark's " Augustinian Canons of 
Barnwell." To Miss P. Johnstone my thanks 
are given for the illustrations, which should, 
it is hoped, provide children with suggestions 
for handwork. 

Finally, with Colet's words, I would dedi- 
cate my ill-finished task to the children: 
" In which little work if any new things be 
of me, it is alonely that I have put these parts 
in a more clear order, and have made them a 
little more easy to young wits than, me 
thinketh, they were before. . . . Wherefore 
all little babes, all little children learn gladly 
and lift up your little white hands for 



me." 



M. E. Monckton Jones. 



Barton, Cambs. 
December 9, 1919. 



Introduction 

I know not by what right I block up the 
Roman road of this valuable history of Cam- 
bridge, unless it be because I have followed 
it myself with great pleasure, by private 
favour of the author, or perhaps because my 
surname happens to be that of a village in 
the neighbourhood. I have never been to 
Cambridge except as an admiring visitor ; 
I have never been to Chesterton at all ; 
either from a sense of unworthiness, or from 
a faint superstitious feeling that I might be 
fulfilling a prophecy in the country-side. 
Anyone with a sense of the savour of the old 
English country rhymes and tales will share 
my vague alarm that the steeple might crack 
or the market cross fall down, for a smaller 
thing than the coincidence of a man named 
Chesterton going to Chesterton. I have never 
really studied history at Cambridge, or anjr- 
where else. And if I have heartily enjoyed 
this modern history of Cambridge, I fear it 
is not because it bears a resemblance to the 

xiii b 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

Cambridge Modern History. In short, while 
my qualifications for pronouncing on the 
point at all are highly dubious, the strong 
sympathy I do feel for the work is mostly due 
to its marked difference from most academic 
digests. What is the matter with those 
academic attempts at universal history is 
that they are generally so very much the 
reverse of universal. They assemble the 
specialists, so as to cover all subjects except 
the real subject. The result is that we only 
succeed in having all things studied in a 
narrow spirit, instead of one thing studied 
in a universal spirit. That is one reason for 
liking a thing like a local history ; that it is 
a large story about a little thing. I prefer 
the philosophical results of a man examining 
a mole-hill, rather than those of a million 
moles exploring a mountain. 

It is to be hoped that the example be 
followed, touching many other English dis- 
tricts ; nor is there any particular reason 
why it should not be followed touching all 
of them. It is true that the author of this 
book happens to have to deal with one of the 
towns universally recognised as historic and 



INTRODUCTION XV 

picturesque, containing some of the chief 
monuments of medieval art, as well as 
some of the chief chairs of modern education. 
But this particular interest of the pageant of 
successive periods really belongs less to Cam- 
bridge as Cambridge than to Cambridge as a 
country town. Even the most urban towns 
are mostly made up of country towns ; that 
is they have grown by absorbing the surround- 
ing towns and villages. We are tempted in a 
fanciful fashion to forget that sites at least 
stand for ever, and cannot be created or 
destroyed. It is as if we imagined that 
Brixton had appeared recently as a radiant 
object in the sky, like the New Jerusalem ; 
or that the very earth on which Manchester 
stands had been manufactured in the Man- 
chester factories. But, indeed, Manchester 
itself is the clearest of all cases to the contrary. 
The Manchester School was credited with 
being unhistorical, or even anti-historical ; 
but the very name of Manchester is a piece of 
history, and even of ancient and classical 
history. There are no new places in Eng- 
land ; for there is no such thing as a new place 
in nature, or even in abstract logic. Therefore 



Xvi INTRODUCTION 

there is no reason why we should not have 
an epic and almost prehistoric history of 
West Kensington, or the truth about the 
romantic story of Clapham. It would be the 
same great story of Rome, of the Church, of 
the Crusades, of the great guilds like those 
that made the cathedrals, if anyone had the 
moral courage to do for Clapham what the 
lady who wrote this book has done for Cam- 
bridge. 

If I might give one example from this book, 
out of many, of the sort of thing that is so 
seriously wanted in a popular history, and 
is so seldom present in one, I would adduce 
the wisdom of giving in their regular order 
the actual terms of the charter which King 
John gave to the burghers. I do not exag- 
gerate when I say I think them far more 
important than the charter which King John 
gave to the barons. The latter is always 
called the great charter, largely because it 
was chiefly concerned with great lords ; but 
this is concerned with smaller men, and 
therefore with larger matters. It consists of 
fourteen clauses ; and as we read it we feel 
passing before us and around us all the living 



INTRODUCTION. Xvil 

movement of the Middle Ages. Besides the 
essential things, the general presence of a 
sort of ideal trading, analogous to the theory 
of a just price, we have a hundred little things 
of singular historic interest, especially when 
they have since grown into larger things. 
We have, for instance, reference to certain 
privileges only belonging " to the king's 
moneyers and servants " ; the latter being 
the position of the Jews, and probably in- 
volving many privileges for the Jews. We 
have the curious feature of continual reference 
to something rather unique and characteristic 
of our own history ; the exceptional role and 
position of the City of London. There is 
an inevitable reference to ale, which flows 
as in rivers through all such records ; and 
especially of an occasion when the burghers 
were sternly confined to drinking only one 
kind of ale, instead of absorbing all possible 
kinds of ale in their due succession. Men are 
often confined to a sort of " scot-ale " in 
the tied houses of our own time ; but to-day 
the celebration lasts all the year round. In 
short, the mere citation of this medieval 
document in detail gives the amateur reader 



XVlil INTRODUCTION 

like myself a real glimpse of the medieval 
democracy. From the stock histories of his 
youth he would have learned little or nothing 
about that particular date, except the extra- 
ordinary wickedness of King John and the 
extraordinary goodness of the British Consti- 
tution. But to those old Cambridge men 
King John was only the name of the King 
who happened to give them the glorious rights 
of guildsmen. And I very much fear that, 
to them, the modern thing called the British 
Constitution would only be the thing under 
which the rights and the guilds were alike 

gone. 

G. K. Chesterton. 



Life in Old Cambridge 



Chapter I. 

The Grassland Strip 

What was there 2,000 years ago where Cam- 
bridge now stands ? A bird taking flight 
from Castle Hill would have had below him a 
shining streak of waters, such as you see when 
the floods are out on the commons. In 
places it would be half-a-mile or so across, but 
if he flew north, Ely way, the lake would run 
into another and another, each wider than 
the last, so that by Waterbeach there would 
be a bay with waves chasing each other 
before the wind. Right away to the Wash 
and the sea were marshes, and a log or raft, 
put into the water at Castle Hill, could drift 
on mile after mile till it came out on to tossing 
seas. 1 Cam and Ouse and their streamlets ran 
together into a waste of waters which cut 

1 See W. Stubbs, Cambridge, p. 9. 
1 



2 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

off Norfolk and Suffolk from the rest of 
England, making them almost an island. 

Out of the shallow water of the marsh, reeds 
and grasses grew thick and tall and made 
green banks on either side of the river. These 
banks sloped gently upwards and spread out 
into wide hillsides, on which might grow gorse 
and sloe and a few may-trees. Then among the 
may-trees might come a few birches, white- 
stemmed and dainty, swinging in the breeze, 
and here and there a feathery ash-tree or a 
thickset oak. Closer and closer grow the 
trees, big beeches and great dark oaks as the 
hills rise, till presently all light is shut out and 
you can only see a yard or two either way. 
For many miles the woods go on, covering 
the hillsides with a dense coat of timber for 
many days' journey till they feel the bleak 
east wind and the salty air of the North Sea. 

Now between the forest and the water 
there lies only one long narrow strip of open 
grassland, a sunny upland by which men 
could travel in the daylight, leaving the dark, 
tangled forest to left and the shining water to 
right as they ran southwards from the bracken 
lands of Norfolk towards the warmer uplands 



THE GRASSLAND STRIP 3 

that fence the Thames valley from the North 
winds. Look at it well, that corridor of grassy- 
slopes. Some forty miles it runs, flanked by 
Forest on the one side, Fenland on the other. 
It holds the secret of the life of Cambridge. 

Whoever comes sailing over the chill North 
Sea, land where he will along the coast be- 
tween Thames and Ouse mouths, he must 
come inland by that grassy slope. If he 
leave ship at Lynn he cannot cross the 
marshes but must work along their edges to 
Brandon before he can turn west and south. 
If he land at Harwich the Forest faces him, 
dark, tangled, full of beasts, and he must 
work northward to turn its outposts till he 
comes to the open passage at Brandon. And 
so too if a troop would find its way to the sea 
from Bedford or north from London, the 
Forest blocks the Way eastwards, the Marshes 
bar it on the north, only by Royston slopes 
to Brandon can it pass to the east and the sea. 

That was the Open Road, " over the hills 
and far away " ; everyone out of East Anglia 
seeking his fortune in the world must tread 
the springy turf of the Brandon and Royston 
uplands. 



4 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

On the sunny south-looking slopes of the 
chalk hills lay the pit-dwellings of the first 
men. To try to live lower down in the valleys 
was dangerous, for often the water would rise 
and soak the soil, and any huts or camps they 
had made would be washed away. It was a 
pity, for the grass down there was longer and 
richer than on the hillsides ; in the lakes too 
and rivers were many fish and wild duck to be 
caught by those who knew how, and so after 
a time men did try to live down there in spite 
of the danger. Leading down to the river was 
a strip of gravel, and here and there it spread 
out into a patch of drier ground, a little hillock 
standing perhaps a few feet higher than the 
grass elsewhere ; there they would dig out a 
flat floor for a hut, throwing the earth up in a 
little round wall into which they thrust 
strong branches to meet overhead as a roof. 
The spaces between them they blocked with 
more earth mixed with reeds or grass, and 
thatched the top with reeds. When it rained 
for days together the mud walls began to 
melt ; then the marsh water too was swollen 
and rose. They were so often washed away 
that at last they found a way to protect their 



THE GRASSLAND STRIP 5 

huts. All round the dry patch or hillock, 
on which their huts were crowded together, 
the men would dig a ditch deep enough to 
carry off flood water, and with the soil that 
they dug out they threw up a great bank. 
Such a place, perhaps, was once the spot we 
now call Cambridge ; flat as it looks it must 
have stood above the surrounding marsh when 
first men built their huts there. 

Beside the group of huts ran the Cam, a long, 
winding chain of lakes and bogs, and beyond 
it the sun would set behind a big hillside. If 
you could get across the water and scramble 
up the hill you would find the land still rising 
slowly as you went west away. Where the 
river ran round the foot of the hill it was easy 
to cross, for the bottom was gravel. A ridge 
of gravel began there and passed by the huts 
and back all the way to the grassland slopes of 
the Gogs. From the Wash southwards this 
was the first place where you could cross the 
marshes. 

There between the river and the grasslands 
the first dwellers in our district, little wiry 
men whose ancestors had come from warm 
lands in the south of Europe made their home, 



6 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

many thousand years ago. They were very 
short, with long, egg-shaped heads, fine 
black hair and beard and sharp features. From 
the hill their keen sight might often pick out 
a troop of men and cattle, moving along the 
grassway on the slopes of the Gogs, seeking 
new pasture or going to chaffer for flints at 
the Royston pit, or northwards to Grimes 
Graves at Brandon. 

Such a troop running lightly afoot soon beat 
out a track over the hillsides, winding here 
to avoid a rough growth of thorn-scrub and 
oak-tree, mounting higher there to escape 
from the muddy margin of a marsh or stream- 
let, and marked along its course by mounds 
raised to cover the bones of mighty chiefs or 
to guide strange wayfarers. 

Such was the country round Cambridge 
in the New Stone Age and Bronze Age. To the 
north-east were the Brakelands (Norfolk and 
Suffolk), open common and heath. There 
the early men clustered around the flinty 
gravel pit or chalk quarry, fed their reindeer 
and the little, long-horned oxen on the 
grasses and mosses, and traded in cattle, 
hides, pottery and basket-work. To chaffer 



8 



LIFE m OLD CAMBRIDGE 



with them came other groups of the same 
people from the southern valleys. These 
had travelled along the upland Ridgeways 
from Chiltern and the Berkshire Downs, and 
even distant Stonehenge or Avebury, bringing 
beads of the beautiful Irish gold or lumps of 
tin and perhaps lead from Cornwall and the 
West. 

These old grass ways of the stone users can 
still be traced and in Berks and Wilts they 
still sweep on for mile after mile over the 
wide downs paved with soft springy green 
turf and thyme. 




T^oceesofrojikuw 
Oje Gold Arn)tlli. 



Gold AmnUa^njGruDtyle^. 
0) 



For centuries the Stone and Bronze users 
held the land, learning by degrees how to burn 
the grass and scratch the surface of the hill 

1 The original is in the Fitzwilliam Museum. 



THE GRASSLAND STRIP 



9 



sides, so that grains of corn would grow into a 
sparse crop to make them bread. But at 
long last the news of their pleasant, peaceful 




A 55peATl>ead, f eW jd 09 Cupbtidije County 



A^TcqjeJ^ue.fi-oipJiortnngssa 



homes on the uplands and the wealth of 
beasts and fodder to be found there, and the 




VIUCett.fwnd 




\Bromt C^tpould,ontt)ai)d closed; 



clean shining Irish gold, led other races, the 
taller round-headed men of Central Europe 



10 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

to come over the sea. These men learnt to use 
weapons of bronze, and gradually spread over 
the grasslands of the east and midlands and 
far north-eastern Scotland. 1 

A few of them seem to have reached our 
district, for in Barnwell was found one of the 
pottery vases called Beakers which they made, 
and a few of their bronze celts or axes, but we 
don't know whether they settled here. They 
were half-a-foot taller than the first men, and 
had beetling eyebrows and big cheekbones. 

The Iron Age 

They were followed by wave upon wave of 
races from Europe, these new-comers too 
drawn probably by the wish to trade. Of 
middle height and beardless, with round 
bullet-heads, they seem to have been more 
ready to fight than the rest, or perhaps they 
had more cause, as each fresh group filled up 
the open grass lands and had to live nearer 
the river or to clear away some of the forest. 
By this time men had found out how to work 
iron ore into tools and weapons, and had to 

1 See Crawford, Geographical Journal (Aug. and Sept., 1912). 



THE GRASSLAND STRIP 11 

build strongholds to keep their families and 
cattle safe. Tribe after tribe pressed into 
Britain between 1200 B.C. and the time when 
Christ was born. One of them was called 
Britons, and though it was only a small group 
it gave its name to the land. Coming from 
over the Channel they settled in the south 
and east, a strong tribe named the Iceni taking 
the land between the Wash and the sea. Safe 
against attack on either side, they found their 
only danger in the open way across the grass 
by which for centuries folk had come north 
from the Downs and Thames to trade and 
settle. So they planted a settlement at our 
fords of the river and along the gravel ridge 
to south of it, higher up, too, where Grant- 
chester now is they passed the narrower 
streams. But others could do so, and perhaps 
wrest the rich grass and riverside lands from 
them. How should they secure it against all 
comers from the south ? On the chalk hill 
tops where little wood could grow except the 
beeches they built big camps, digging out the 
soil for 12 or 15 feet, and throwing it up into a 
great encircling mound on which they could 
plant a strong fence of timber. This would 



1: 



LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 



do well to hold the hill, but enemies could 
still pass along the open way below to the rich 
lands of Norfolk and Suffolk. They must 
bar the open Ridgeway. So they made Dykes 
of earth such as fenced their camp-villages, 




y\)tyitaxt) TDyfcey OayobndgesbuT 



but longer and mightier. Like the men of 
China or Babylon they would build a great 
earth-wall to shut the open entrance to the 
land of their tribe. From in under the 
eastern forest of oaks and beeches on the hills 
it should run out into the open where wind 
and sun played hide and seek with the cloud- 
shadows all along its sides. There the grass 



THE GRASSLAND STRIP 13 

grew short and sweet and the Dyke ran on 
and on down the slopes to where the water of 
the Fens made marching impossible. Right 
on down into the water they built it so that 
there was no room to pass between the dyke 
and the marsh at one end of the dyke and the 
forest thickets at the other, and a few Britons 
on the dyke could challenge all comers from 
the south. Two such great Banks and ditches 
run close to Cambridge, the Fleam Dyke from 
Balsham to Fen Ditton still lies like a great 
grass swathe across the way to Newmarket 
and Brandon. Not one or two only were the 
Dykes, but four. North of it lies " the 
Devil's Dyke," and to the south two more. 
An invader trying to come in along the 
Way would first have had to force the 
passage of the Brand Ditch, running from 
the bogs between Melbourne and Fowl- 
mere to Heydon on the hills above the 
Thames, then the Brent Ditch near Abing- 
ton (then that of the so-called Worsted 
Street), 1 then Fleam Dyke, and at last the 
mighty Devil's Dyke, a massive pile 30 feet 
high from the bottom of the Ditch to the top 

x Probably not a dyke; the old name is Wolf Street Way. 



14 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

of the mound and reaching unbroken for 10 
long miles, from Reach on the water to the 
forest Wood Ditton. 1 

*See Conybeare's Cambridgeshire, p. 14. 



Chapter II. 

The Romans 

In the Iceni's time the great Roman 
Empire, under those Caesars who commanded 
that " all the world should be taxed," had 
spread northward and westward from Rome 



&£ 



riU4> 




T«u 



"Frrot of jSbUld. *. ]^vem,6bowit)ol)*i><fl*v. 
wpiVt Covufty Jkx), va* By. On)\», 1W*. 



till it reached the English Channel. Across the 
water the men of Gaul had been fighting hard 
for their freedom with Julius, the first Caesar. 
They sent for help to their brothers in Britain. 



16 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

Reinforcements slipped over from the island 
to their aid, not as they go now, to France in 
great steam transports, but in tiny wooden 
boats, rigged with queer sails of skin or 
leather. Caesar himself wrote down what 
they were like. 1 

" The keels somewhat flatter than our ships, 
so that they can take the shallows more easily 
at ebb tide ; the prows and the sterns too 
very upright, suited to the great waves and 
storms. The ships are made of wood through- 
out to bear strain and hard use to the utmost ; 
the rowers benches fixed with iron nails as 
thick as my thumb to beams a foot wide ; 
the anchors bound with chains instead of 
rope ; skins for sails, the leather tanned fine, 
either because they have no linen or don't 
know how to use it, or more likely because 
they have to bear such ocean storms and 
wind-storms and such weight of ships that 
they do not think it handy to manage with 
cloths." 

Wishing to see their land, Caesar gathered 
a fleet of galleys and sailed to the white cliffs 
of Kent. Despite resistance he marched his 

1 Caesar D.B.G. iii, Ships of the Veneti of South Brittany. 



THE ROMANS 17 

legions into the great forests, seizing camp 
after camp on the hilltops till he wrested even 
St. Albans from Caswallon, King of certain 
of the British tribes in the Thames district. 
After this Britain was very loosely linked to 
Rome for a hundred years till Caswallon' s 
grandson, Cymbeline, made East Anglia his 
own : his coins are often found here. But 
the Iceni hated his law, and later helped a 
Roman army to defeat his son Caradoc, and 
make Britain into a Roman province. 1 The 
first orders the new subjects got were to lay 
down their arms and this no doubt they would 
have done but the fierce, keen Iceni, who 
had fought shoulder to shoulder with the 
Romans against the other tribes, expected 
better treatment. They thought themselves 
as good as any Romans, and rather than lay 
down the spears and swords which they had 
carried from boyhood they defied mighty 
Rome, the world-wide Empire, and called 
the other tribes to help them to turn out the 
foreigners. They re-built the Dykes ; strong 
fences of timber were no doubt reared along 
their crests and all the manhood of the tribes 

•Gardiner. Students History of England. Vol. I, p. 2. 



18 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

gathered behind them to withstand the 
enemy. 

If we try to imagine what followed we may 
guess that the Roman forces, led by Ostorius 
Scapula, would march north from Ermine 
Street along the Icknield Way. Perhaps they 
crossed the Cam at Shelf ord and rested for the 
night in the grass at Granhams, where you 
may still trace three sides of a simple Roman 
Camp. On the Gogs, just above them, would 
frown the hill camp of the Iceni. Next morn- 
ing no doubt the Roman trumpets blew to 
the attack, and Scapula led 
his soldiers out. Steadily 
climbing the long easy slopes 
they kept their ranks and 
poured over the earthworks 
of Vandlebury. But the main 
resistance had been prepared 
at the Fleam Dyke. Crowded 
together on the Dyke the 
l»fe$^. Britons would look out eagerly, 
only to see stragglers fleeing 
to them and the enemy following swift 
behind. Like a steel wall the Roman legions 
would march up, shield locked in shield, and 




THE ROMANS 19 

the rough arrows and spears of the natives rain 
down harmlessly for the most part on their 
solid front. Pierced by their javelins, smitten 
down by their short, keen swords, the Britons 
soon broke and fled out over the long nine 
miles to the Devil's Dyke. As when a great 
sea-dyke bursts the waves pour through and 
spread along the plain, so men fleet-footed 
raced the ponies of their leaders for the last 
shelter. The great thirty-foot Devil's Dyke, 
crowning the long climb to the moor looked 
indeed immovably safe, no doubt, for those 
who could slip in behind it ; but the one 
entrance was soon blocked, and then the 
fugitives crowding on one another could not 
even turn to defend themselves. The Romans 
coming hard after them found them as easy 
prey as a flock of sheep, penned for the shear- 
ing. They did not spare ; when evening fell 
hardly any of the Iceni was left alive and 
the rest were slaves. 

Caradoc indeed escaped the slaughter, hav- 
ing earlier been driven away into the fast- 
nesses of Wales to raise what help he could, 
but the next year the Romans had followed 



20 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

him even there and shattered the last hope of 
freedom. 1 

The Roman rule was harsh. Roman money- 
makers bullied and robbed the Britons for 
12 weary years till a last outrage against the 
Queen Boudica brought revolt. The savagery 
of its short-lived success led to fearful revenge 
when Rome once more got the upper hand, 
and the men of Cambridgeshire, who had 
led the revolt, were wiped out. The Romans 
drove straight stone-paved roads through the 
land from camp to camp ; held fortresses at 
Colchester, at Godmanchester, at Chesterford 
and in Cambridge itself, which held down the 
feeble remnants of the warlike tribes till they 
grew quieter and learned the arts and civil 
ways of their rulers. 

1 For the sake of the story I have followed Conybeare, p. 19. 



Chapter III. 

The Province 

When the Romans were masters of the land 
they used many of the old British hilltop 
forts as camps or outposts and built others of 
their own fashion. The coasts were guarded 
by Roman galleys and by camps, such as 
Caistor and Brancaster, and all the eastern 
coast was under the rule of a Roman called 
" The Count of the Saxon Shore" (a name the 
later story will explain). Each camp was 
square in shape with gates North, South, 
East, and West, from which the great roads 
ran, so that Britain was covered with a stone 
network of military roads in which the knots 
were stone cities, each one built about an 
open market-place or " Forum." The old 
earthen walls were faced with squared blocks 
of stone and each gateway was defended by a 
stone turret. Safe inside the Chester gates 
Roman nobles built beautiful " Villas," baths 
and temples ; and even in our days men often 
find 10 or 12 feet underground remains of the 
altars they set up to their gods, the pottery 
they made or brought from Gaul or the coins, 



22 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

stamped with their Caesars' names. Near 
the old fords fine bridges of timber or stone 
carried the new roads. 

At Cambridge the hillside on the west of 
the ford became a great oblong Chester, 2,500 
feet from East to West, and 2,000 feet from 
North to South, its walls ran from Chesterton 
Lane, round the site of St. Giles' and the top 
of the hill, where now St. Peter's stands, 1 
down again to Merton Hall garden. From the 
Forum, no doubt a Roman Governor could 
look out over the whole land, see the distant 
trees that grew on the Isle of Ely, standing 
among the northern waters, watch the street 
that climbed away north-west to Godman- 
chester, or turning scan the height of Vandle- 
bury camp for the glitter of the sentinel's 
signal. To the south as the Roman Peace 
grew villas began to rise on the pleasant, 
sunny slopes over which Ermine Street ran, 
making for Londinium and the galleys that 
sail for Rome. As their builders cut down 
the forest above and drained the marshes 
below troops of slaves went out from every 

1 For inconclusive evidence of a temple to Diana on this site 
see The Cambridge Portfolio, p. 264: 



THE PROVINCE 23 

villa to plough and tend the soil, and for the 
first time the Cambridge lands began to shine 
with waving fields of wheat and oats and 
barley. Vineyards too they may have made 
facing the sun as in their own Italy, rows of 
short creepers forming glistening patches of 
green among the cornfields, but above all were 
great herds of sheep, driven out to crop the 
sweet grass and thyme of the hillsides and 
carefully guarded at night from the forest 
wolves. Beside each villa the slaves quarters 
or " ergastula " formed the black heart 
of the domain, where men of Africa, or Asia, 
or rude tribesmen caught in the woods of 
Germania or Helvetia bowed under the whip 
of the freedman who farmed the land for 
his master. In the forum of Cambridge, 
as in other cities, no doubt men and women 
with their children could be seen put up for 
sale. Here perhaps a learned Greek, whose 
master had tired of study, would fetch a big 
price ; there a Walloon captured in the 
Flemish marshes would be advertised as a 
skilled boatman, likely to be useful in the 
Fens ; here again a shivering Egyptian or 
Arab would be bought to act as stoker in the 




TF\©t*)arj V&3seMQUt)dat I.cadct)^i;Strc£i:,t»ot)clw ♦ 



L mm i ii in !■■ iiiiii ■!!■!■ . — -- , — | ,| mi M ian n i i 



THE PROVINCE 



25 



villa " hypocaust." Native cattle, still half 
wild, would be driven in from the eastern 
grazing grounds, hustling one another in fear 
over the strange white bridge 1 , to mingle with 
oxen shipped hither from Italy and Gaul : 
the rough, short, dun ponies from the Berk- 
shire downs would be squealing and biting 




t Rot9W)Br093cRbuk,foiw^ 

X. Bot^Broi^eKt^iH Handle, fi^TftclJborou^,Kt9i. 

at the glossy, desert-bred Roman chariot 
horses as they drank together at the aquaduct. 
Below on the river the bluff-bowed galleys 
would lie loading up with grain for Caesar's 
soldiers in Germania, while the red ware made 
of Terra Sigillata they had brought, signed 
with (Cistio Titi) the Flemish maker's mark, lay 

1 No remains of a stone bridge have been found, but as a 
centre of roads it seems probable that Cambridge would have 
had one. 



26 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

heaped upon the straw on the wharf. Soon 
it would be shown in the dealer's booth and 
carried to the purchaser's villa at Foxton or 
Cottenham or out across the hills to Colchester. 
You may see pieces of them still, and trace 
the maker's name if you ask in the Archaeo- 
logical Museum. When you handle them 
try to picture the Cambridge of those days, 
the stately Roman in his bordered toga 
entering the temple to pour a goblet of wine to 
the gods ; the gay young centurion wheeling 
his century in the Forum changed the guard 
at the Praetorium ; the farmer citizens from 
the country villas each followed by his steward 
and a troop of slaves, meeting to pay their 
tithes to the decurion, to hear the news from 
Rome, and enjoy an hour's gossip in the baths. 
The fortunate Briton who had made friends 
with the Romans and secured his freedom, 
dressed now in a toga, aping Roman manners. 
He stands to listen perhaps to a preacher of 
the strange new Christian creed and laughs as 
his Roman friend declares it is only another 
of the Eastern sects that have been turning 
the world upside down and should be left to 
slaves and women. 



THE PROVINCE 27 

For while the Romans had been settling 
their new province of Britain strange things 
had happened in Rome. 

One day about the time that Scapula 
subdued the Iceni a troop of men walked out 
from among the great marble palaces and 
temples of Rome along the old south road, 
the Via Appia. They were very plainly clad, 
quiet but confident in bearing and talked with 
great eagerness as they hastened along. 
When they had reached a halting place where 
three taverns stood, they seated themselves 
under the shade of an olive tree, but one 
young man went on down the road and stood 
looking southwards. Presently he waved his 
hand, and they sprang up to greet a little 
group of men coming towards them led by 
one small of stature and roughly clad but 
bearing himself like a victorious general. 
When he reached them he raised his hand in 
blessing, and they all bowed their heads, then 
broke into a joyous chant. It was St. Paul, 
and the Roman Christians were doubly over- 
joyed when they heard of his escape from 
shipwreck and thought of the teaching he 
would give them in the coming days. As a 



28 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

prisoner awaiting trial he would be kept 
in Rome, and they could care for him and 
learn from his lips the story of his conversion 
and the work he had done among the Greeks. 
During all the three hundred years that Rome 
held Britain St. Paul's disciples learnt and 
practised the new faith. Sometimes they 
were left in peace to worship quietly, and then 
Nero or Domitian would take a fancy to root 
out the religion which made even slaves inde- 
pendent and defiant of their orders. Then 
the Christians would hide in underground 
burial-places to hold their services or flee into 
waste places, but their best were taken and 
brought into the arena to fight with African 
lions or wild boars from the Apennines, while 
the city-bred Romans sat on the marble tiers 
of seats in the great theatre and cheered or 
hissed as the sight aroused their passions. 
But " the blood of martyrs is the seed of the 
Church " : men were moved by the sight of 
these heroic sufferers and asked what it was 
that made them go singing to their awful 
deaths. Many more became Christians, and 
even among the settlers in Britain the faith 
spread. The symbol of the cross was raised 



THE PROVINCE 29 

over stones that had been pagan altars and 
temples were turned into churches. At last 
in 321 a.d. the Emperor Const antine gave 
leave to all his subjects openly to worship 
Christ, so throughout Britain the church 
spread, bishops ruled great districts, and 
helped the praefects in the cities. 

Where Castle Hill stands all these things 
happened day by day for three hundred years 
and more till Britons forgot they had ever been 
free and ignorant or had to fight for life against 
the wild beasts or among themselves. But 
the prosperous, peaceful life began to be dis- 
turbed by rumours of trouble in Rome. The 
Emperors had left the city. The Goths were 
threatening the new capital, Constantinople, 
then Italy, at last even Rome itself, and 
sacked it in 410 a.d. The Roman troops 
were recalled to Italy. Cohort after cohort 
must have marched into Chesterton from 
the North ; some came down Watling Street 
from Chester and the Welsh Marches ; others 
from the great North Wall through Eboracum 
(York) and down the Ermine Street or by the 
Akeman Street from the Coast, where the Count 
of the Saxon shore held watch and ward against 



30 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

those pirates of the Wide Sea. Into the 
camp on Castle Hill they would pour, rest a 
night or two, and then march out by the 
southern gate down Akeman Street to join 
the road for London or to pass by Silchester 
to Venta Belgarum (Winchester) and take ship 
for Gaul and Italy, for "all roads lead to Rome." 
Legion after legion got their marching orders, 
and when the wealthy farmers asked " Who 
guards the Wall ? " "Is there no fighting 
with the Picts ? " centurion or legionary 
shook his head and muttered grim stories of 
the blocking of the wide gateways that guard 
the camps behind the great North Wall, 
and how a dozen men were left to guard five 
miles of frontier ; how empty lay the great 
base camps, while all who still dared live upon 
the border drew together into the walled 
chesters for safety. For Rome, the Eternal 
City, was falling and the " Pax Romana," 
which had brooded over every province, even 
to distant Britain, was coming to an end. 
Now every Roman lord and British farmer 
must look to his own right arm to shield him 
and his villa. 



Chapter IV. 

Saxon Times : Pagan and Christian 
The Desolation 

For a hundred years Cambridge and the rest 
of Britain suffered grievous things. As the 
shining legions of Rome marched away south 
the prosperous Britons and Roman settlers 
were left to themselves. British chiefs took 
up the title of King and issued coins stamped 
with their heads as the Caesars had done ; 
they are found now sometimes, little hoards 
of them hidden away in the ground in an 
earthenware jar or single coins dropped 
perhaps in hasty flight from a lonely villa 
beset and burned by the barbarians. In the 
cities Decurions and Bisho*ps still held rule, 
and tried their best to keep up the walls and 
to rally the frightened townsmen in their own 
defence. For the peaceable farmers and 
traders found it hard to train themselves in 
the strict, military discipline which had 
rendered the legions such a power. The 
Roman habits and customs, their ways of 



32 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

building and farming gradually decayed, and 
the Christians slipped back into the old 
heathen practices, sacrificing furtively to the 
Sun or to some local forest god in the wild hill 
country. The great Wall in the north was 
broken down and overrun ; barbarous Picts 
and their Irish allies swarmed southwards 
and reached the midlands, plundering and 
burning the cities and slaughtering the feeble 
households of the farms and villas. Bravely 
the bishops tried to rally their poor terrified 
flocks, going out before them with the Cross 
to do battle and themselves fighting manfully 
to beat back the raiders as they did at the 
" Hallelujah " victory 1 . They appealed in 
vain for help to the Roman Governor in Gaul, 
in a letter called " The Groans of the Britons," 
saying, " The barbarians drive us into the 
sea ; the sea drives us back to the barbarians ; 
between them we are exposed to two sorts of 
death ; we are either slain or drowned." 
Still the pagans came on. The story of St. 
Patrick tells how they ravaged a place in 
North Wales, killed the Decurion and carried 
off his son, little Patrick, to be a slave and herd 

1 Bede xx. 



SAXON TIMES 33 

cattle in Ireland. Such things were happen- 
ing every day all over the north and the mid- 
lands. Men shut themselves up within the 
four walls of a city and built up the wide 
gateways till there was only room for one man 
at a time to pass in or out. Lonely villas 
were abandoned, their treasures buried, and 
soon the vineyards and cornfields that had 
made Roman Britain one of the great gran- 
aries of the world were over-run with weeds 
and brambles, and grass began to grow between 
the stones of the straight Roman roads which 
had knit all quarters of the province up with 
Rome. 

At last, the south Britons in despair, 
watching the barbarians draw steadily nearer 
to their last refuge, sent to the Angles and 
Saxons of the Continent for help, and in 449 
a.d. the first Englishmen landed in Kent. 
It was at Stamford on the Welland that these 
new allies first did battle against the Picts 
and Scots, and no doubt the men of Cambridge 
sent a body of swordsmen to join them as 
they passed along the Ermine Street to the 
field of battle. 



34 



LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 



The English 



The English strangers wore sharp, narrow 
blades, which they called " seaxas." One 
was found at Barrington in 1890, and is now 
in the Archaeological Museum. It is an iron 
dagger-blade, 12 inches long and two in 
breadth, almost straight, but pointed and 
grooved. There, too, are bronze and gilded 
brooches shaped like horses' faces, with which 




An^c-jS'a.vm jSta*c, aodBUi; found i&^txriT>$Tov,CaJm\x\d$tshirt.m\3S3in&\l$1. 

they fastened their plaids at the shoulder or 
neck, and the round bucklers they carried on 
the left arm. Those were made of wood or 
leather crossed with strips of iron or strength- 
ened by great iron studs and bosses. As 
they marched along the paved street and 
looked out on the green pastures and shining 
waterways of Cambridge and Suffolk the 
English thought how easily they could sail 



SAXON TIMES 



35 



their light ships up into the heart of such a 
land, and how poor a fight the Britons were 
likely to put up. So when they had beaten 
the Picts they sent home for their kin, who 
came swarming in by the rivers Ouse and 
Yare and Thames. 




fibula, arid/Patc ck Clasps , uutb decorated plait set \wilb silver cUs^s, 
N^tJ)e^glo~£axoi)Cet9«ery^ 



Where the Britons resisted their towns were 
burnt, and they themselves enslaved or driven 
back into those marsh refuges which had 
sheltered their early ancestors. The English 
would not live cooped up in towns, but set 
up their villages in the open country. 



36 



LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 



Beside the fords of the streams by which 
they had entered, in an open forest glade on 
the hillside, or on the sunny uplands from 
which they could overlook all the valleys, they 
reared their wooden huts and barns. Cutting 




Old/Cottages, tf CViryt)U)to9,Catt)bs • 
down beeches or oaks to form upright " cracks 
or crutches," they set them 15 feet apart 
like the pillars of a church. A long straight 
trunk with the bark on, placed from one 
pair of crutches to another, formed the 
roof-tree, stout timber beams the rafters, 
and between the uprights hurdle-work of 
wattle daubed with straw-bound clay filled 



SAXON TIMES 37 

in the gaps and soon dried hard. Then thatch 
was laid on the rafters from the well-cut gable 
of the roof-tree to the overhanging eaves, 
often no more than five or six feet from the 
ground, as you may see them still in parts of 
Germany. The daub was washed with blue 
or pink or yellow, and the pathway paved 
with rounded flints. While each man had his 
own cottage nestling in its toft or garden- 
patch apart from its neighbours, big barns 
and stables held the corn and cattle of the 
whole kin or patriarchal family group 1 . 

Such English villages would spring up in 
Norfolk and Suffolk as the Angles worked 
their way inland and southward to our own 
district ; also in the midlands where Mercians 
turned east till they reached the Cam. Each 
village had its cluster of huts, its warm 
meadow for the lambs and kine, its bit of 
plough-land and its rough pasture on the 
edge of moor or woodland. Beyond all the 
land of the tribe was the protecting " mark " 
or boundary, an earthen mound with quickset 



1 This seems to be implied in Rectituclines Singularum 
Personarum, see Bland, Brown and Tawney, Select Docts. of 
Econ. Hist. 



38 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

hedge or timber fence and a cleared belt 
beyond it. In outlying parts the villages 
still stand much as they did then, a cluster 
of human nests, thatched and coloured, 
gathered round an open green, but dominated 
now by church and manor, where then only 
the village moot, the mound or tree of public 
assembly, marked the centre of the village life. 1 
For these English were pagans, worshipping 
Thor and Woden, singing the old sagas and 
keeping the fierce old customs of "an eye for 
an eye," as their notion of justice. Horrid, 
ruthless and accursed in the eyes of the 
Christian Britons, so that none would even try 
to convert them, superstitious as they were 
ignorant, they looked with awe and dislike 
on the walled, four-square Roman cities, and 
left them to moulder away. If a stone bridge 
had been built across the Cam it would be 
let fall to ruin by men to whom ferries and 
fords were more natural. The villas and 
streets of the camps collapsed and only the 
names, Chesterford, Chesterton, etc., showed 
they had once existed to guard the crossings. 
For, meeting on the Cam from opposite sides, 

x See L. Gomme. Primitive Folkmoots. 



SAXON TIMES 39 

the Mercians and Angles became bitter 
enemies. While Mercians held the hill, with 
a strip known as Aermeswerk, south of the 
Roman camp, where Magdalene now stands, 
the Angles held the gravel ridge on the east 
of the river with a crossing higher up at Elde 
Newenham. So Cambridge began as two 
towns, the northern or Mercian, and the 
southern or Anglian, and each seems to have 
had its own market and its own three fields. 
The south-eastern fields were known as Barn- 
well Field, and reached out to Ditton, Cherry 
Hinton and Trumpington, while those on the 
north-west were called Cambridge Field, and 
reached from Grantchester round to Coton, 
Madingley, Girton and Chesterton. " Each 
had its pieces of common pasture. Each was 
apparently cultivated on the usual three-field 
system. The three divisions of Barnwell 
Field were known as Bradmore Field, Middle 
Field and Ford Field. . . . Those of the 
western or Cambridge Field were Grithow 
Field, Middle Field and Carme Field, with the 
last of which was reckoned Little Field." 1 

1A Gray. The Dual Origin of the Town of Cambridge, 
p. 2. 




tlott^^ooriuayotOurlia^ya Ct)apd,^tourbtl(i^ t 



SAXON TIMES 41 

Between the two peoples, Mercian and 
Anglian lay the Fens and in them a remnant of 
the first men led a hunted life. Their hand 
was against every man, and the fair-haired 
Saxons, whom they ambushed at times and 
robbed, hated their dark, southern features, and 
called them " Black Devils " and " British 
Thieves." To the eastward of their haunts the 
North and South Folk formed the notable 
kingdom of East Anglia, under the Uffing, 
Redwald. At the court of his neighbour, 
Ethelbert of Kent, Redwald had met the monk 
from Rome, Augustine, and learned to worship 
Christ, and when Ethelbert died it was Red- 
wald who took up his title of Bretwalda. But 
Redwald was only half a convert, for Bede 
tells us "in the same temple he had an altar 
for the sacrifice of Christ, and another small 
one to offer victims to devils." His son, too, 
was first heathen, then Christian, and for 
some years the kingdom was torn by the 
conflict between the old savagery and the 
creed of Peace. Redwald's second son, Sige- 
bert, was driven to France, and there learned 
from the Frankish churchmen to love the new 
order. 



42 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

Coming back to reign, he was followed by St. 
Felix of Burgundy, who was made the first 
bishop of East Anglia. With his help Sigebert, 
" being desirous to imitate the good institutions 
which he had seen in France, set up a school 
for boys to be taught in Letters." 1 Felix, 
no doubt, tried to convert British as well as 
Anglians, for he died at Soham, then a sea- 
port, looking over the watery haunts of the 
Girvii, and there a monastery was built in 
his honour. Sigebert was an ardent servant 
of Christ, and when he had brought order and 
the new light of education into his kingdom 
he retired into a monastery hoping to end his 
days in peace. But he could not be spared. 
The Mercians had remained pagans, they 
made a raid across the Cam, and Sigebert 
came out from the peaceful cloister to stand 
by his people. Carrying no weapon but a 
stick, he helped his successor to rally them, 
and a stand was made, but in the fight both 
leaders were slain, and yet another of Red- 
wald's descendants, Anna, became king. To 
confront the Mercian danger he chose as his 

1 Conybeare's Cambridgeshire p. 45. 



SAXON TIMES 43 

homestead, Exning, a village lying on the 
western slopes of the downs, backed by the 
heath now called Newmarket, and over- 
looking the lines of the great Dykes that still 
formed the best barrier of defence to all East 
Anglia and were the scenes of many more 
great battles. 

From Exning Anna ruled with sword and 
cross, " a good man and the father of an ex- 
cellent family," but he too fell at last before 
the ceaseless onslaughts of the Mercians. 
They were the only pagans left in England, 
and the more furious on behalf of Woden and 
Thor. Their king Penda attacked one Chris- 
tian king after another till he was supreme 
in the land. In 654 came the turn of East 
Anglia, and Anna, calling to his aid his son- 
in-law, Tonbert, lord of the South Girvii, 
maybe manned the Dykes with mixed troops 
of "British thieves" and Saxon Christians. No 
valour availed against the practised war-lord, 
Penda. He hurled his hordes over the defences 
" like a wolf, so that Anna and his folk were 
devoured in a moment." But this was the 
night " darkest before the dawn," and next 
year Penda was killed at Winwaed by an 

£ 



44 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

allied force of the Christian kings, and Mercia 
itself was soon forced to lay down the old 
heathen faith and join the rest of England in 
the church. 

Nowhere did Christian light shine out more 
brilliantly than in our Eastern land. Anna's 
" excellent family " were like stately columns 
upholding the holy church. One son, Erken- 
wald, was bishop in the old Roman city of 
London, guarding the Thames and the church- 
men's route to Canterbury and Rome. His 
sisters ruled as abbesses of Barking and of 
Dereham, while two more, Sexburga and 
Ermenilda queened it in Kent and Mercia, the 
one carrying on the work of St. Augustine, the 
other strengthening the hands of St. Chad in 
his stern schooling of the Mercians. In France 
another sister, Sedrida, Abbess of Brie, set 
up schools to which many English girls went. 
Best known to us is the last of them all, St. 
Etheldreda. Married first to Tonbert, she 
received as dowry the fen-land of Ely, and on 
his death she became Queen of Northumbria. 
There at Whitby her aunt, St. Hilda, had 
founded a famous abbey, and was diligent 
in reviving Christianity, ravaged by Penda 



SAXON TIMES 45 

Fired by her teaching, St. Etheldreda returned 
to build at Ely a house 1 , which became the 
beacon-light of the fen-lands, a sanctuary and 
refuge for the oppressed through many cen- 
turies, and remains to-day one of the most 
lovely works of man. 

At this time began to rise in Cambridge- 
shire and the surrounding country a ring 
of abbeys, centres both of religious scholar- 
ship and of wise farming lore, which gave 
this country-side a foremost place in 
English history. Ely, Peterborough, Thorney, 
Ramsey, and Crowland were the most 
famous. The intercourse which would grow 
between Ely and Brie is typical of the 
close contact of East Anglia with the most 
flourishing ports of France and Flanders for 
the next thousand years. The great water- 
way of the Fens and Wash was one with that of 
the North Sea, the Scheldt and Rhine. From 
650 a.d. onwards the growing trade of the 
Frank and Flemish cities would supply the 
great, monastic houses of East Anglia. Costly 
embroideries, rich jewelled relics, gorgeously- 
bound books, spices and incense for the abbey 

1 Bede, chap. xix. and xx. 



46 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

churches came over the Alps and down the 
Rhine stream from the Levant merchants, 
and so across the " Wide Sea," to be landed at 
Ely or Soham or Bottisham, or further up the 




jgraxooTopdVtsstL . y©UDaaX£yarrtogrc>n. vn 




J\DtnapVes«ls, found at Hars&ro.Carobs: 

inland water to Landbeach or the wharves of 
Cambridge itself. There the Irish boats too 
came in, their dark, Celtic boatmen wrapped 



SAXON TIMES 47 

in heavy frieze cloaks and their monks bearing 
exquisitely decorated missals 1 , richly enamelled 
ornaments and weapons and wonderful carved 
work to sell to their brethren of the South. 

For Ireland was the land of gold, of fine art 
and most zealous devotion, the centre of 
learning and of the Faith. For four cen- 
turies it was from the green island of the 
western seas that the greatest missionaries 
and scholars went out to teach Christ to 
the barbarous Teuton, not in Britain only, 
but in Saxony, Flanders and Germany, till 
the days of Charlemagne. In Scotland and 
Wales their abbeys stood at Iona, at Bardsey, 
and at Lindisfarne, and all round the northern 
coasts their little ships plied fearlessly. Ely and 
her sister abbeys of Peterborough and Crowland 
were well-placed to receive and rest these 
ardent venturers for Christ and forward them 
on their dangerous missions over the North 
Sea. For their delicate and lovely goods the 
Anglians would give quantities of their rough 
pottery and strong basket-ware of the Fens, 

1 A fragment of St. Luke'8 Gospel in Corpus Christi Library- 
is of Seventh Century Irish workmanship. The initial letters 
are molt beautifully coloured and decorated with figures of 
birds intertwined into a plaited pattern 



48 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

and store their ships afresh with fish and meat 
and corn from the abbey lands. So they 
would pass on to be the founders of the first 
bishoprics in Germany. 

From a.d. 673 to 679 St. Etheldreda ruled 
in Ely and over the 300 square miles of half- 
submerged lands known as the Isle. Men of 
many races came to kneel at the shrine and to 
traffic, and so at a later time a fair sprang up. 
This went on year after year until in Norman 
days King Henry I. ordered all boats to 
go to Cambridge to unload, and then no 
doubt only the lighter trifles were carried to 
Ely, to St. Audrey's fair, and her name 
became the word for worthless, " tawdry " 
baubles. 

But one solid relic of St. Audrey's reign 
remains, the stone base of a cross kept in 
Ely Cathedral. These words are cut upon 
it:— 
" Lord, give Thy light and peace to Owen. Amen." 

Till recently it stood in Haddenham. 
This Owen was St. Audrey's prime minister 
or Over-Alderman. His name is a British 
one and no doubt he ruled her Girvian 
people in the Fens. He lived, perhaps, 



SAXON TIMES 49 

at Winford, and died in a monastery 
at Lichfield. Bede says " He fully forsook 
the things of this world, quitting all that he 
had, clad in a plain garment and carrying 
an axe and hatchet in his hand, . . . signi- 
fying that he did not enter the monastery to 
live idle, as some do, but to labour." 1 Such 
men in every abbey taught the Anglians to 
forsake war and roystering and to use the 
axe against their natural enemies of forest 
and fen, to labour and learn to turn the wild 
country into fertile farms. 

No part of England was more productive 
and well to do than Cambridgeshire. The 
lands which the Romans had farmed were 
easy to clear and cultivate ; the great abbeys 
followed the rules of the Benedictine houses 
abroad and their stewards organised great 
troops of peasants working on the level lands, 
growing corn and wine and herding sheep 
and pigs. Children were gathered to the 
monastery schools and taught useful crafts 
and trained in obedient diligence and rever- 
ence for holy men and things. Pilgrims and 
travellers passed along the ancient Way and 

1 See Conybeare, p. 54. 



50 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

the Roman streets, slept at the abbey guest- 
house, marvelled at the rare glass windows 
of the churches, and told thrilling tales of 
adventure and miracle in return for the plenti- 
ful fare and home-made wine or ale of the 
religious hospices. The old Pilgrims' Way 
that winds over the hills from Walsingham 
to Bury and on through Ickenham still shows 
where the troops of travellers, pilgrims, 
merchants and soldiers passed. South-west 
beyond Cambridge St. Mary's chapel crowned 
and gave its name to the first line of hills as 
a landmark to guide the wayfarers towards 
the Ermine Street. 

Now after Anna's day there was one ruler 
for all the kin of the English, Egbert of 
Wessex, and the men of Cambridge and East 
Anglia came in to him and had help of him 
against the men of Mercia in 825 a.d. Freed 
from that danger Cambridge began to grow. 
Each people had their own town and market- 
place, the Mercians on the fortified hillside, the 
Anglians on the patches of dry ground known 
as " hills " amid the marsh of the Eastern 
side. The gravel ridge, a mile or so wide, 
that runs from the Gogs to Magdalene Bridge, 



SAXON TIMES 51 

was their main roadway, with houses on 
either side, then on Market Hill, Peas Hill and 
St. Andrew's Hill, three more clusters of huts 
soon ran into one town, while all around open 
marshy fields gave pasture and ploughland 
as far as Trumpington, Hinton and Ditton 
villages. The many ancient roads meeting 
at the ford brought traffic from the abbeys 
to meet the merchants riding up from London 
and the ships that unloaded at Magdalene 
Wharf, so Egbert gave the town the right to 
have a mint and make coins stamped with his 
device. 
No doubt Cambridge like other villages 
had its Reeve and four good 
pfSfl^ men to represent it, chosen by 
3*ss3££&te3i the Folkmoot ; it is certain that 
the Hundred Moot was held 
here, which met at first by the Bridge. 1 

Try to picture the Saxon place with its 
groups of tiny cottages, built of timber and 
hurdle-work daubed with mud, and thatched 
with straw or reeds. Here or there larger 
buildings, made of the same simple local 
means, are the common barns or may be 

1 See Liber Elitn&it, p. 135. 



52 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

known by the wooden cross or bell-turret 
for churches, and round them every day you 
may see monks dressed like the Italian peasants 
in rough woollen cloaks and hoods going in and 
out, building a new house for themselves or a 
hospice for travellers, showing some peasant 




1. Ar)gto-Saxot)$pu)dk^oi^^ 

from the hills how to fashion a plough or yoke, 
teaching the children to repeat their prayers, 
or two townsfolk how to calculate the value 
of the goods they would barter. On Sundays 
and feast-days the people flock to common 
worship. Many come long distances out of 
the fens, bringing with them the pots or 



SAXON TIMES 53 

baskets tliey have made since the last feast, 
others come down from the hills with skins 
of wolves or wild-cats. After church they 
stand about offering these things in exchange 
for the salt some seaman has brought in or 
the flax the monks have been growing. So 
the churchyards become the market places, 
and men who live in the outlying hamlets 
look to Sunday as the one day of the week 
in which they can leave their labour of dyking 
or clearing the forest and meet their fellows, 
see the alderman presiding in the Moot to 
settle the last quarrel with the Mercians or 
bring their share of wheat or swine to pay 
tithe and house-penny as a freeman should. 

All round the town the land lies open, with- 
out hedges or trees or houses. Some of it is 
being ploughed; by the many winding branches 
of the river are meadows of lush grass ; further 
off in the plough-land ponies and small 
cattle are being kept together by a herd while 
they graze the rough grass and weedy stubble 
of the last year's harvest field. Away on the 
slopes of the hills herds of half wild pigs are 
rooting and munching under the trees and 
filling themselves with acorns and beechnuts. 



54 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

Here and there a rough sledge or cart with 
solid wooden wheels bumps and rumbles along 
the old Roman street or makes its heavy way 
along some field track or " headland " to 
where the " hayward " guides a line of 
mowers. A few old thorn bushes give patches 
of shade where children roll and play in the 
short, trodden grass of the " balk " while 
their parents work at the crops, each on his 
own strips. In the clear water of the meres 
boys are bathing and swimming, disturbing 
the fishermen in their light skiffs of wicker 
and skin, or sending the waterfowl whirling 
up in a cloud only to circle and settle a little 
further off. 



Chapter V. 

The Danes 

But while Cambridge began to draw the life 
of the countryside round its two towns, the 
coast of Anglia was overhung by a worse form 
of the danger that had always threatened it 
since the Roman Count had watched for 
pirates on the Saxon shore. 

In 787 a.d. three ships, better manned and 
longer than any of the Saxon or English ones, 
but built like them narrow and light with 
high carved beak and stern and steered by a 
fixed stern oar, came lifting and falling over 
the crests of the North Sea. Watchmen, 
who first espied the coloured sails and strange 
Raven banner, ran hot-foot to warn the Reeve, 
whom the King had chosen to rule that 
country. 

" Then the Reeve rode to the place, and 
would have driven them to the King's town, 
because he knew not what men they were. 
And then and there did they slay him. These 



56 LIFE TN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

were the first ships of Danish men that sought 
the land of Angle-kin." 1 

So without warning or parley began the 
first of the Norse raids, which were once more 
to make East Anglia and Cambridgeshire 
desolate. Fleet after fleet came on before 
the North-east wind and raced up the river 
mouths, the ships rowed by 30 or 40 oars 
apiece. The crews hauled up their boats and 
built or seized a stronghold on the higher 
ground, where they could be secure through 
the winter months ; thence they would march 
out afoot or on captured horses, raid the great 
abbeys, sacking all their wealth and burning 
the fine stone and timber towers till they 
flared like beacons of disaster over the red- 
dened water of the Fens. 

Thetford was commonly the headquarters 
of this pagan army, and from there they must 
have marched by Cambridge every time they 
would go inland either to York or the Mid- 
lands or over the Chiltern Hills to harry 
Bucks, and Hertfordshire and the soft Thames 
Valley. In 870 a.d. they rode back and 
martyred St. Edmund at Bury, " and trod 

1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 787 a.d. 



THE DANES 57 

down all the land and brake down all the 
Minsters that ever they came to," even Ely 
not escaping. In 875 three of the Viking 
chiefs " sat down " in Cambridge " one whole 
year," until at last they were overpowered 
and had to " steal away " westwards into 
Dorsetshire. Three years later Alfred beat 
their host at Ethandune in the hills of Somer- 
set near Athelney, baptized their leader, 
Guthrum, in the font at little Aller (pro- 
nounced Oiler) by the Parrot and so made 
peace, dividing the land between them. 
Cambridge, lying just north of the boundary, 
the River Lea and Watling Street, fell to the 
share of the Lords Danes and was ruled by 
their Lagemen from the Moot place by the 
bridge. 

In 905 a.d. Alfred's son Edward took arms 
again and drove the Danes northward from 
the Watling Street boundary, and here in 
Cambridgeshire his Kentish men, lingering 
under Siwulf the Alderman, and Kenwulf 
the Abbot, fought to a standstill on the 
Dykes, slaying the Danish King but losing 
their own leaders and the field of battle. 
Seven years later, Edward and his sister, 



58 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

Ethelfled, Lady of the Mercians, gathered 
their joint strength and laid down sound 
plans of conquest. Marching steadily north- 
east, they gave battle again and again and 
won back stretch after stretch of the country ; 
built earthen strongholds to keep it secure ; 
planted new settlements of Wessex men as 
at St. Ives, and grouped the Hundreds in 
Counties round each of the reviving towns. 
And so at last in 921 a.d. " all the (Danish) 
host among the East Anglians swore to be at 
one with King Edward, that they would all 
that he would, and would hold peace toward 
all to whom the King should grant his peace, 
both by sea and land. And in especial did 
the host which owed fealty to Cambridge 
choose him to father and to lord ; and there- 
to swore oaths, even as he then bade it." 

Each hundred in the new county of Cam- 
bridgeshire held some ten villages or " tith- 
ings," where each man was known to his 
neighbours and answerable to the whole 
village for any misdeed, as was the " tithing " 
itself to its fellow- villages and to the Hundred 
moot. 

Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk lay 



THE DANES 59 

apart from the rest of England, cut off by 
the waters, all but an island and hard to come 
at even from the south. While loyal to Edward's 
heirs, these counties lived a life of their own 
and their Hundred moots seem to have sent 
men to a Witan of their own, 1 which every 
freeman might attend from all East Anglia, 
though few probably troubled to take long 
journeys to do so. At the Witan presided 
an Alderman for all three shires, the most 
famous being Brithnoth. The Ramsey Chron- 
icler tells how this hero marched out to his 
last battle with the Danes at the Blackwater 
in Essex. On the way he refused to take 
food unless the men of his hearthward or 
bodyguard could share it. " I cannot fight 
without my men, neither will I feed without 
them." The battle is recorded in the famous 
saga called " The song of Maldon." They 
had reached the place of battle, and Brithnoth 
dismounted to fight among his men on foot 
as Saxons did, when the Vikings sent a mes- 
senger to demand ransom : — 

11 Thy realm may est thou ransom 
By sending the Seamen, 

1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1004 a. d. 



60 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

To their own full doom (i.e. terras), 

Gear and gift. 

Then back with our booty 

To ship will we get us, 

Fare forth on the flood 

And pass you in peace.' 1 

Brithnoth answered as a true Englishman 

" Hear thou, sailor, 
What saith this people, 
For ransom we give you 
Full freely our weapons, 
Spear-edge and sword-edge 
Of old renown. 

This bode in return 

Bear back to thy shipmates, 

This word of high warning, 

That here stand undaunted 

A chief with his chosen : 

This land will we fight for, 

For Ethelred's realm, 

For our King, folk, and country. 

Then waded the water 
Those wolves of the slaughter 
Nor stayed them the stream : 
Pressed over Panta (Blackwater) 
The Vikings' war : 
O'er the wan waterway 
Weapons they waved, 
Their shields to shore 
The shipmen bore." 



THE DANES 61 

The fight was bitter ; the Danes were so 
badly mauled that they made off without 
waiting for more " ransom," but Brithnoth 
fell, and his faithful hearthward bore his head- 
less body back to Ely. There they had rested 
and feasted on their way out, and Brithnoth 
had repaid the Abbot's hospitality by princely 
gifts, the grant of jurisdiction over many 
villages of his in Cambridgeshire. Among 
them were Trumpington, Teversham, Trip- 
low, Fulbourn, Hardwicke, Impington, Crox- 
ton, Soham, and Papworth. His widow gave 
a golden collar and a tapestry record of his 
deeds to the abbey, and there his tomb can 
still be seen. It was King Alfred who had 
revived Ely after the Danish raids, sending 
eight monks to repair one aisle of the old 
church, and this served nineteen years later 
as a refuge to the whole country-side. King 
Sweyn had come to take vengeance for the 
treacherous massacre of his subjects on St. 
Brice's Day. The men of Cambridge made 
a heroic stand at Ringmere, and the King 
punished it by a merciless harrying of the 
whole district with fire and sword. 

In 1010 a.d., " while all England shook " 



62 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

before Sweyn "as a reedbed rustling before 
the wind," Ulfcytel, "the Ready," Brith- 
noth's successor as Alderman, rallied the 
forces of whom the Danes themselves had 
said in 1004 that " never worse hand-play 
had they met in England " ; he stood against 
them at Ringmere, but his forces broke ; 
" Soon fled the East English. Then stood 
fast Grantabrygshire alone " ; so fast stood 
they and so worthily that " while English 
kings rule, the praise of Cambridgeshire shall 
flourish." But no one shire could long with- 
stand a king's host, and the Danes took the 
fiercer vengeance, riding throughout the dis- 
trict for three weary months, destroying all 
save Ely, safe behind her floods. Cambridge 
was sacked and burnt. " And they even 
went into the wild fens, and there they des- 
troyed men and cattle and burned throughout 
the fens. What could be moved that did 
they lift, what they might not carry that did 
they burn . . . and so marched they up and 
down the land." 1 Of all the villages none 
suffered more than Balsham, small and re- 
mote as it was. The old church tower still 

1 See Ingulf. History of Croyland. 



THE DANES 63 

stands with the narrow winding stairway on 
which one man barricaded himself safely, 
only to find when the raiders rode off that all 




#ixot,BTomc-gUt Disc se£ urtlhta" 
gxTt)UcBo1XoK) Cao*ridgesbwre. 

his kinsfolk were slain or enslaved, and he 
alone remained of the whole ham. At Bar- 
rington fierce fighting seems to have held the 



64 LIFE Itf OLD CAMBRIDGE 

ford across the Cam, for there were found in 
1875 skeletons of men and horses, a " seaxe," 
shield-bosses, swords, daggers, spearheads, a 
green glass brooch with the Danish snake- 
headed raven cut upon it, and a bronze 
charm with Saracenic characters such as the 
Danes wore, and which are still found from 
time to time in places where they lived in 
England. The final battle of Assandun, in 
which Edmund Ironside was defeated, was 
perhaps fought at Ashdon on the borders of 
Cambridgeshire. 

The Danes, after harrying Mercia, had 
made off towards the ships they had left in 
the Thames estuary; but Edmund, guided 
perhaps by the monks of Ely, 1 who would 
have watched the line of smoking villages 
left in the enemy's wake, made hard after 
them, and overtook them by the rising 
Bourne. There the king charged under his 
royal banner and the Golden Dragon flag of 
Wessex. " Brandishing his good sword, he 
clove like a thunder-bolt the Danish battle- 
line," but some felon raised the cry " Flet 
Engle," Dead is Edmund," and started a 

1 See Liber Eliensis, p. 196. 



THE DANES 65 

panic. " Thus did he betray his King and 
Lord and the whole people of Angle-kin. 
There did the whole English nation fight 
against him ; and there had Cnut the victory. 
There was slain Bishop Ednoth (of London) 
. . . and Ulfcytel of East Anglia. . . . And 
all the nobility of the English nation was there 
undone." 1 In 1020 a.d. Cnut built at Assandun 
" a minster of stone and lime, for the souls of 
the men who were there slain." 2 For Cnut 
was Christian and a good king, and befriended 
Ely though the monks had gone against him 
at Assandun. Many stories are told of his 
love of Ely ; of his song : — 

Merry sang the monks in Ely 

As Cnut, king, rowed there by. 

" Steer lads near the land 

And hear we the monks chant." 

Merie sungen the Muneches binncn Ely 
Da Cnut ching reu ther by. 
" Roweth cnites noer the land 
And here we ther Muneches saeng." 

Of his love of attending the services at Ely 
the quaintest tale is told. 

The Feast of the Purification was at hand. 
Cnut was at Soham and could not get through 

1 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1010. 2 Canterbury Chronicle. 



66 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

to Ely by reason of the unusual frost and ice. 
" The water of the marshes was frozen. His 
good mind would not change, but he was 
anxious and groaning. He thought, trusting 
in the Lord God, to cross the mere from Soham 
to Ely in a sledge if the hard frost did not 
stop, but that he would make the rough 
journey with more safety and with less fear 
if someone should go before him. Now by 
chance there stood by in the crowd a great 
hulking man from the Isle, one Brihtmer 
Budde, so called from his thickness. He 
offered to go before the king. They crossed 
safely, and Cnut constantly told the story, 
and praised God for the wonder that so great 
and bulky a rustic should make not the least 
stumble on the way, so that he himself, being 
both active and of small size, could follow 
straight on without fear." So pleased was he 
that he called Brihtmer to his presence 
and granted the serf freedom and possession 
of his hut and land for ever ; and the Ely 
monk who tells the tale says " his children's 
children live there free and in peaceable pos- 
session to this day." 1 

1 Liber Eliensis, p. 203. 







Jtyejower of {DjBeqetsCWcV, CkxoWidqe. 



68 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

It was about this time that the burnt huts 
of Cambridge must have been rebuilt, for 
Cnut had a mint at the town, and the coins 
made here were marked with the old name of 
the place, " Grant " for " Grant ebrigge." 
It was perhaps soon after this that the 
first stone church, St. Benet's, was built. 
Most of the churches of those days were 
made of timber, and the masons who built 
St. Benet's tried to make the stone they 
used into the round shape of turned logs to 
decorate the windows, as you may see in the 
tower of that church. 

Of the life of Cambridge in later Saxon 
times we do not know much, though Domesday 
Book tells us that the Confessor's Sheriff 
made each burgher or free householder in the 
town " pay for his protection three days' 
ploughing yearly or the value of it in money, 
as well as the " heriot " of 20s. paid when they 
came into their land. Somewhere about this 
time, too, the people of standing, called thanes, 
joined in a gild, partly to help each other in 
time of need, partly to keep order and put an 
end to bloodshed. It is one of the oldest 
gilds in all England, and Cambridge may well 



THE DANES 69 

be glad to have the record of some of its 
rules. 

Gild of Thanes of Cambridge 

" Here in this writing is the declaration of the laws 
which the members of the Gild of Thanes at Granta- 
brycge have resolved upon. 

The first is that each give his oath to the others on 
the sacrament of fidelity before God and before the 
world, and the whole society shall (up)hold him that has 
most right. 

If any member die let the whole gildship bring him 
(for burial) to the place he chooses, and he who does not 
come thereto shall pay a syster 1 of honey ; and the gild- 
ship shall pay half of the expense of the funeral feast of 
the departed ; and each shall give twopence 2 in alms, 
and as much of the sum collected as is right shall be 
offered at St. Atheldritha's. 

And if any member have need of the assistance of his 
fellow members, and it be told the reeve nearest that 
member, in the case of the member not being near, and 
the reeve neglect it he shall pay a pound. And if the 
Lord (of the gild) neglect it he shall pay a pound, unless 
he be on Lord's need 3 or be very sick. 

If anyone kill a member let the fine be not less than 
eight pounds. Then if the slayer refuse to pay the fine 
let all the gildship avenge the member and every one 
bear his share. If one do it 4 let all bear equally. And 

1 A syster is probably 15 pints. 

2 The penny was worth about 3d. 

3 On business of his office. 

* i.e. if one does vengeance. 



70 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

if any member slay a man and he be needy and he must 
make compensation for his deed, and the slain man be a 
man of twelve hundred shillings, 1 let each member give 
half a mark 2 to help him. If the man slain be a ceorl let 
each give two oras, 3 if a Welshman 4 one ora. If the 
member slay any one by wrong and by folly let himself 
bear the consequence of what he has done. And if a 
member slay his fellow member by his own folly let him 
satisfy the kinsman himself, and buy again his place in 
the gild with eight pounds, or lose for ever the right of 
fellowship and fraternity. And if any member eat or 
drink with him who has slain his fellow member unless it 
be in the presence of the king, 5 or of the bishop of the 
province, or of the aldermen, he shall pay a pound, unless 
he can make it appear by two witnesses that he did not 
know him. 

If any member abuse another let him pay a syster of 
honey, and if anyone abuse one not a member, let him 
pay one syster of honey, unless he can clear himself by 
his two witnesses. 

If a servant draw his sword let his lord pay a pound 
and the lord may have it as he can, and let all the gildship 
help him that he recover his money. And if a servant 
wound another, let the lord (of the wounded) avenge it, 
and let the whole gildship inquire that he have not life. 

And if a servant waylay a man he shall pay a syster of 

1 i.e. of weregild rated at 1,200 shillings, but its value varied 

constantly. 

2 Mark = 13/4. 

3 Ora was of two kinds 16 pence and 20 pence. 

4 Welsh commonly used for British, i.e. non-Saxon. 

5 Wherever the king went his "peace" went with him and 
thus gave sanctuary. 



THEJDANES 71 

honey, and if anyone have a foot-setting he shall do the 

same. 

And if any member die or be sick abroad his fellow 
members shall fetch him and bring him dead or alive 
whither he wishes, under the same penalty as has been 
named. If he die at home the member who does not go 
to fetch his body, and the member who does not attend 
his morrow speech, shall pay his syster of honey." 

Some of these rules are not easy to under- 
stand. " Let the whole gildship inquire that 
he have not life " seems to mean that they 
are to set justice to work to punish the crime 
with death. The word foot-setting is prob- 
ably used for " trap " or " snare " ; and the 
" morrow speech " is no doubt a meeting 
held in praise of the dead. We do not know 
the later history of this gild, but it is tempting 
to guess that it was the germ of the ruling 
group known as " the men of Cambridge" 
since it was made up of the thanes. 

Not long before this, about the year 930, a law 
had been made that " If any man fare three 
times over the Wide Sea (? North Sea) by his 
own means, he shall be of thane-right worthy," 
and it may be that some of these Cambridge 
thanes had risen in this way. A gild of water- 
merchants ruled at this time in Paris, which 



72 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

still uses their seal of a sailing ship ; perhaps 
our gild of thanes did the same for Cambridge. 
Many gilds arose in the next three centuries, 
and every one of them was under the guardian- 
ship of some holy saint. For the Church took 
care to guide and help men in all their doings, 
and no man would have dared to do without 
its help, not even the king. In this way the 
Church had learned to make good rules and 
plans, and it is no doubt partly from such 
bodies as the gilds, and partly from having 
to judge of fair-play in the Moots that Saxon 
townsmen learned to manage their own town 
affairs. The Church had practised managing 
matters for nearly six hundred years in Italy 
and France and the countries of the Mediter- 
ranean before St. Augustine came to England, 
so his followers could aid the Saxon kings to 
write down their best customs as laws or 
" dooms," and to plan their councils. These 
little bands of peaceable townsfolk joining 
together against any troubles that might come 
upon them, illness or fire or raiding pirates 
or plundering barons must have learned that 
" union is strength," and the Church sanc- 
tioned and guided the clubs they formed, and 



THE DANES 73 

encouraged them to meet in the churches. 
Gilds were formed to do neighbourly work, 
to feast together or walk in procession in 
honour of their saint or founder ; to say ser- 
vices and hear masses for one who died, care 
for his burial, put together money for his 
widow, and look after his children ; also 
they made rules that work should be carefully 
and honestly done, and no man defrauded 
of what was due to him. 



Chapter VI. 

The Norman Years 

Already we have traced a number of changes 
in the life of Cambridge. We come now to 
the greatest, the Norman conquest ; each 
left some mark in the customs and character 
of the people here as in the rest of England, 
and this the most. The wide, well-managed 
villa-farms of the Romano-British had been 
covered up by the free villages of the Saxon 
kin with their lands owned and tilled in 
" common " fields. These again were mas- 
tered in part by the Vikings, and the Dane 
law governed all the towns north of Watling 
Street, making them more eager for trade 
and shipping than other parts. The English 
" earls " yielded to Danish " jarls " of higher 
standing, and when Edward the Confessor 
died, Jarl Gyrth, Godwin's son was ruler of 
all East Anglia, and led his housecarls to his 
brother Harold's aid at Hastings, only to 
fall beside him. We know little in detail of 
the doings of Cambridge folk in the first years 



THE NORMAN YEARS 75 

of the Conquest except that the reason 
William built one of his new castles, probably 
of earth and timber, on the hilltop was, as 
Fuller says, " that it might be a checkbit to 
curb this country which otherwise was so 
hard-mouthed to be ruled." This was done 
as he marched homewards in 1068 from his 
stern handling of rebellious Yorkshire. Now 
as of old to hold the Cam bridge-way was to 
grip the key of this country-side, and William 
was too good a king to miss it. Two years 
later, however, Ely became the City of Refuge 
for all who withstood him. In 1070 a.d. 
" came King Sweyne from Denmark 1 into the 
Humber. . . . Then came into Ely Christien, 
the Danish bishop, and Earl Osbern, and the 
Danish domestics with them ; and the Eng- 
lish people from all the fen-lands came to 
them, supposing that they should win all 
that land. Then the monks of Peterborough 
heard say, that their own men would plunder 
the minster ; namely Hereward and his gang ; 
because they understood that the king had 
given the abbacy to a French abbot, whose 
name was Thorold. , . . Then came they in 

1 Not to be confused with Cnut'a father. 



76 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

through fire at the Bullhithe Gate ; where 
the monks met them and besought peace of 
them. But they regarded nothing. They 
went into the minster, climbed up into the 
holy rood, took away the diadem from our 
Lord's head, all of pure gold, and seized the 
bracket that was under His feet, which was all 
of red gold. They climbed up into the 
steeple, brought down the table that was hid 
there, which was all of gold and silver, seized 
two golden shrines, and nine of silver, and took 
away fifteen large crucifixes, of gold and of 
silver ; in short, they seized there so much 
gold and silver, and so many treasures, in 
money, in raiment, and in books, as no man 
could tell another ; and said, that they did it 
from attachment to the minster." 1 The next 
year " went Earl Morkar to Ely by ship ; 
but Earl Edwin was treacherously slain by 
his own men. Then came Bishop Aylwine, 
and Siward Barn, and many hundred men 
with him, into Ely." They crowded in across 
the marshes to the little island, ten miles long 
by five wide, and found there abundance of 
food in the corn and cattle of the Abbey, the 

1 See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , 1070. 



THE NORMAN YEARS 77 

stags, goats, hares, fish and fowl of all kinds that 
the island produced. A Norman knight whom 
they captured told afterwards how they fared. 
" In the eddies at the sluices of these meres 
are netted innumerable eels, large water- 
wolves, with pickerels, perches, roaches, bur- 
bots, and lampreys, which we call water- 
snakes. There you find geese, teal, coot . . . 
herons and ducks, more than men can number. 
... I have seen a hundred — nay, even three 
hundred — taken at once, sometimes by bird- 
lime, sometimes in nets or snares." 1 

Thus stored with food of all sorts and sur- 
rounded by the great, natural moat of the 
Fens, Ely made a first-rate stronghold. The 
monk Thomas of Ely, who tells the story, 
says, " King William, when he knew that most 
strong fighter, Hereward to be there, gathered 
exceeding much valour to fight against them, 
and devised evil against the holy place and 
how to ruin it." With his boats-carls he 
came up the Ouse to Brandon and Reach on 
the east to beset the Isle, " with a host which 
no man could number," while on the south he 
had others to try to make a causeway over 

1 Liber Elienaia, p. 232. 



78 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

the marsh with faggots and sandbags from 
Willingham to Aldreth. But Hereward led 
sallies out against them, drove them off and 
bore back much spoil into the Isle. " When 
the king heard that he was wroth and com- 
manded to summon the strong and brave 
from all the townships and towns to hunt 
them out." These Hereward again beat off, 
and then the king's great men came to him 
and said, " ' Let us make peace with yonder 
men ; for the place which we beset is fortified 
and we do not prevail against them : ac- 
cording to the traditions of their fathers have 
they borne themselves against us. And the 
word was pleasing in the eyes of the :i King 
and of his princes : he sent to them to make 
peace.' . . . But the English outlaws hardly 
trusted him, and soon claimed that he had 
broken faith with some of their friends and 
the struggle began again. Once more William 
tried his plan of a causeway, ' he ordered all 
kinds of things to be thrown in, many trees 
and faggots not a few, with sheepskins scraped 
and filled with sand,' but this time when his 
soldiers rushed on to it, eager to get at the 
rich plunder of the abbey, it gave way under 



THE NORMAN YEARS 79 

them and many were drowned or choked in the 
mud. Then the story tells that a sorceress 
was brought and set in a tower to hearten 
the troops by her incantations. Now Here- 
ward did a brave thing. He wanted to find 
out their plans, so taking his pet mare, Swallow, 
who always looked awkward and flagging, 
but was of fine breed, extraordinary speed 
and active to endure long lasting work, he 
dressed up as a potter. He cropped his long, 
thick hair and beard, put on the pale clay- 
smeared smock and took the earthenware 
pots. That evening he got to the witch's 
house and she took him in, thinking him a 
poor man. He spent the night there and could 
have killed her but wanted to hear the plans 
she was making. In the morning he slung 
the pots on his shoulders again and went 
along, shouting out "Pots, pots, good pots 
and bowls : earthenware of all sorts and the 
best make," and so made his way to the 
quarters of the king. Then he was taken 
by the king's servants into the kitchen, where 
they bought pots. Where amongst others 
present was a reeve from the neighbourhood, 
who swore that he had never seen anyone 



80 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

looking more like Hereward. And when he 
said so busybodies and hangers-on ran up 
from all directions to spy and make up their 
minds whether it really was Hereward or a 
man like him, and this story became known 
in the Hall among the pages and nobles. And 
looking hard at him they would not believe 
that clumsy countryman to be Hereward 
and denied it. He stood like a stupid and 
made no reply to those who questioned him in 
French, although he understood it very well. 
For they asked if he had sometimes seen or 
known that rascal. To whom at last he gave 
this answer in English : Would that that 
man of Belial were here now, hateful to me in 
everything ; I might be well avenged of him. 
For he himself stole my one cow and four 
sheep so that I am forced miserably to beg 
and thrown into such great misery that I can 
scarcely carry on a wretched life by means of 
this mare and the pots, with great shame and 
toil. 

" And while this bickering was going on, 
one came from the king's presence and ordered 
them to hasten the king's meal ; on which 
account the wrangling (j( e( j down meanwhile. 



THE NORMAN YEARS 81 

But before long the cooks and riff-raff eating 
and drinking got thoroughly drunk, and 
noticing Hereward, thought him a dolt ; so 
they seized him with his pots all round him, 
blindfolded him and drove him on to them 
to smash them. Then thumping him with 
their fists they tried cruelly to pull out the 
hair on his chin and by way of a game to shave 
his head. But it hardly happened as they 
expected, they soon paid the forfeit. At 
this point, when try as he might he could no 
longer keep his temper, one of them hit him 
on the head, whom in return he gave back a 
blow under his ear so that he fell as if dead. 
When his comrades saw that, all fell upon 
him with prongs and forks, and he, seizing a 
stake from the hearth, defended himself 
against them all, one being killed and many 
wounded. He was seized, dragged out and 
made over to the guard. And whilst he was 
kept under guard, there came a man carrying 
fetters in one hand to bind him and a drawn 
sword in the other : which Hereward striking 
from his hand seized and quickly slew him 
with his own weapon and wounded the others. 
And so escaping by the fence he found his 



82 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

mare and mounted her, and as she galloped 
off the crowd of lads tried to pursue her ; 
but her great speed plunged him with her into 
the wood of Sumersham and by the light of 
the moon he came by night into the Isle and 
set his armed men where ever there were con- 
venient points, lest by chance any trouble 
from the enemy should come upon them 
unawares. 

Now when the king, returning home knew 
of this, he applauded Hereward's unconquer- 
able courage, giving orders positively that if he 
were at any time seized he should be kept 
unharmed." 1 

Another story is told of him by Gaimar, in 
quaint old Norman-French verses, like this: — 

Then the king bade 

Build a bridge over marsh ; 

Said he would slay all 

None should escape him. 

When these knew it in Ely 

They put them at his mercy ; 

All went crying for mercy 

Save Hereward, right bold. 

He fled with few folk 

Geri with him, his kinsman, 

With them were fir© comrades. 

1 Liber EUensia, pp. 235-6. 



THE NORMAN YEARS 83 

A man who brought fish 

To the guards along the marsh 

Played the true man and courteous 

In his boat took them, 

With reeds and flags hid them 

Towards the guards began rowing 

As evening grew dusk, 

Nigh their camp in his boat. 

The French were in a tent 
Guy the Sheriff, their captain, 
He knew well the fisher, 
Knew well 'twas he coming, 
Of him none took notice. 
They saw the fisher rowing, 
Twas night, they sat eating. 

From the boat came forth Hereward, 

Bold as a leopard ; 

His comrades came after 

Made for the tent through a covert, 

With them followed the fisher. 

Hereward was erst his Lord. 

How shall I tell it ? the knights 
Were surprised at their meal. 
Grasping axes entered those, 
They were no fools at striking 
Slew twenty-six Normans, 
Twelve English were slain there. 

Great the fear through the dwellings, 
All shared in the flight. 



84 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

Left horses all saddled, 

The Outlaws sprang on them, 

Each chose a rare, good horse. 

The wood was near, they entered it, 

They went not at random, 

Knew well all that country, 

Had many their friends there. 

At a town that they came to 

Found ten of their party. 

These joined them to Here ward. 

Erst were they eight, now were ten more. 

Eighteen were the comrades. 

Before they passed Huntingdon 

Had a hundred well-armed men 

Of Here ward's liege vassals, 

They were his men and faithful. 

Ere the morn's sun was risen 

Seven hundred had joined him 

They followed to Bruneswald. 1 

By such deeds of rare daring and craft 
Hereward kept up the courage of the English 
and beat off and disheartened William's 
Norman vassals. But the monks of Ely 
grew weary of the rough life. They knew 
too that the Holy Father at Rome had blessed 
the king's banner when he set out, and being 
loyal churchmen and learned clerks they 

1 Gaimar's Chronicle of Hereward contains man y other stories , 
mainly legendary. Gaimar, Lestorie des Engles, vol. ii. (see 
"Rerum Britannicarum.") 



THE NORMAtf YEARS 85 

held it wrong to resist the Lord's Anointed. 
So they sent word to William that they would 
submit to him and do his will, and they showed 
him a way across the marshes. His men 
followed it, and entered Ely, and Hereward 
was forced to flee. For some years he wan- 
dered as an outlaw, but William had always 
praised his gallant spirit, and at last it is said 
that he made friends with him and promised 
that he should hold his lands in peace. 



Chapter VII. 
Mediaeval Cambridge 

In the fight for Ely, Cambridge was the King's 
headquarters, and Castle Hill must have 
swarmed with the barons and their vassals, 
called in from " all the townships and towns," 
with all the supplies too and the serfs who 
had to bring them ; the busscarls or boatmen 
forced to do service by water when the king 
summoned them ; the machines of siege and 
heavy wagons to draw them. The Cam 
would be crowded with boats, rafts of timber 
and faggots for the causeway, and barges 
heavy laden with goods for the camp. No 
doubt all this brought some wealth to the 
burghers, and about this time some of the 
oldest buildings began to rise. William's 
first Castle was most likely a timber one, of 
two or three stories, no wider than a church 
tower. It was probably set up on the green 
mound that is still there, made by William's 
men to bear it. The bottom story would be 
built of solid logs with no door or windows. 



MEDIiEVAL CAMBRIDGE 



87 



The entrance would be in the second storey, 
to which men would climb up by a ladder or 
sloping plank that could be drawn up after 
them in case of attack. The ground floor 
was used only as a cellar or "Donjon" to 
store food or prisoners in, and gave that 




C^stLt Hill , CatnbrvcUfe , 
U)iU) ttje jwp 8iujgwtt&. t 

name to the whole tower. By the end of his 
reign William had begun to build stronger 
towers of stone, called keeps, but these were 
often too heavy for the earthen mounds, 
which gave way under them. Perhaps that 

i After the plan of Bramber Castle, by C. Ashdown. " Castles 
in their Glory ' ' series. 



88 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

was why the Keep of Cambridge Castle was 
built afterwards below and a little to the 
north of the motte or mound. A great Gate- 
house was also built on the Huntingdon Road, 
and four smaller towers between them. These 
were all joined to one another by stone walls 
known as " curtains." The Borough covered 
the whole hilltop from Mt. Pleasant to 
Chesterton Lane. In the outer Bailey, or close 
about the Castle walls would cluster the huts 
of the villeins and serfs who gave their crops 
or their labour for the right to their land and 
to shelter in case of need. Their houses 
would be of wattle and daub, probably one 
room only with holes for window or chimney, 
thatched and surrounded with tiny gardens of 
herbs. The boundary of the Castle area 
where Histon Road begins was marked in 
later days by a stone Cross known as " the 
High Stone Cross at Castle End." All this 
part of Cambridge was sometimes called " the 
Borough," and the oldest houses in the place 
are still to be found there, such as " The Old 
White Horse " and " The Three Tuns Inn." 

From this high point Cambridgeshire was 
ruled by the King's Sheriff, called Picot. He 



MEDIAEVAL CAMBRIDGE 89 

had been made lord of Bourn, and other 
manors. He or his successor is thought to 
have built the old Manor Hall, now called 
Merton Hall. It was the sort of house used 
by the Norman gentry everywhere, one long 
room with stone pillars, 15Jft. apart, four on 
each side, dividing it into nave and aisles ; one 
end was marked off by screens for the kitchen, 
and at the other end an alcove built out at 
right angles was the private parlour, or 
" soler " of the Lord and Lady. The hall 
was raised on vaulted cellars where stores 
and cattle could be kept, and so the entrance 
was by some stone steps forming a short out- 
side stair. In the one great room the whole 
life went on ; men worked, played, fed, and 
slept there, and the women too. Like the 
smaller houses it would have no chimney, 
but a hole in the centre of the roof over the 
great hearth, though this was covered later 
by a little turret or " louver " with open sides, 
such as you may see in the Hall of Queens' or 
Peterhouse. Old pictures shew the Hall 
with a thatched and gabled roof, and in old 
days it was common for churches to be roofed 
with thatch ; instances are still to be 



90 



LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 



seen at Long Stanton and at Ickenham, in 
Suffolk. 

Before the Conqueror's reign ended, the 
great reckoning was made of all the land and 
property in the country which could pay 
anything into the King's treasury : we know 




it as Domesday Book. The monk who wrote 
the story of Hereward gives this account of 
it : " He (William) laid an unbearable tribute 
on the English and ordered an account of 
the whole of England in that year, how much 
land each of his barons was holding, what 



MEDIEVAL CAMBRIDGE 91 

knights holding in fee, wheat hides, what 
villeins, what beasts, yea, what live cattle 
each man possessed in his whole kingdom 
from the greatest to the least, how much each 
taxable holding paid ; and the land was 
vexed with many mischiefs by reason of these 
doings. And terror and distress such as were 
not from the beginning arose in all men's 
minds. And in that day all nature was grieved, 
strife waxed among men, pestilence among 
beasts, ruin and famine in the land." 1 

The century after the Conquest must have 
changed the look of Cambridge more than 
any later one. Besides the Castle and stone 
Manor house the Normans reared several 
other beautiful buildings. The most famous 
for many years was Barnwell Priory, and in 
the history of its life we can see a picture of 
what monks were doing all over England at 
this time. 

Barnwell Priory 

In 1092, Hugolina, the wife of Picot the Sheriff, 
lay grievously ill. Her husband prayed with 
her for her recovery, and together they vowed 

1 Liber E liens is, p. 223. 



92 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

if she were given health to found a house for 
six Augustine Canons and dedicate it to Saint 
Giles. In a few days the Lady was well, and 
the vow was soon redeemed, St. Giles' being 
built just below the Castle mound between 
Chesterton and Huntingdon Way. 

But Robert, their son, when his father died, 
was accused of joining in a plot to murder 
King Henry I. ; so he fled from the land, and 
his place and the office of sheriff were given to 
Pain Peverel, who had carried the standard of 
Duke Robert of Normandy on his crusade. 
Peverel wished to add to the number of 
the Canons, and "perceiving that the site 
on which their house stood was not large 
enough for all the buildings needful to 
his Canons, and was devoid of any spring 
of fresh water, Pain Peverel besought 
King Henry to give him a certain site 
bej^ond the Borough of Cambridge, extending 
from the highway to the river, and sufficiently 
agreeable from the pleasantness of its position. 
Besides, from the midst of that site there 
bubbled forth springs of clear, fresh water, 
called at that time, in English, Barnewelle, 
the Children's Springs — because once a year, 



MEDIAEVAL CAMBRIDGE 93 

on St. John Baptist's Eve, boys and youths 
met there, and amused themselves in the 
English fashion with wrestling matches and 
other games, and applauded each other in 
singing songs and playing on musical instru- 
ments. Hence by reason of the crowd of 
boys and girls who met and played there, a 
habit grew up that on the same day a crowd 
of buyers and sellers should meet to do busi- 
ness. There too a man of great sanctity 
called Godesone used to lead a solitary life, 
having a small wooden oratory that he had 
built in honour of Saint Andrew. He had died 
a short time before, leaving the place without 
any habitation on it, and his oratory without 
a keeper." 

King Henry granted Peverel 13 acres of 
land round about the springs, and in 1112 the 
Canons were removed from St. Giles and a 
new church begun with " ponderous work- 
manship " in the Norman style. In 1122 
Pain died, and his son " William was not so 
eager for the building of the church as his 
father had been, but went to the Holy Land 
and presently died there." 1 

1 J. W. Clark, Carab. Antiquarian Soc, Proc, XXXIII, 



94 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

The ponderous Norman church was never 
continued, but the Priors had built a lighter 
one, which was finished by the 5th Prior and 
Everard de Beche in 1190 and consecrated 
to St. Giles and St. Andrew, and in the next 
half century the 9th Prior " built the f rater 
and the farmery, the great guest hall, the 
granary, the bakehouse and brewhouse, the 
stable for horses (oxen were still used for 
ploughing, but men travelled on horseback), 
the inner and outer Gatehouse and the walls 
of the new work . . . almost to the top. He 
finished the chapel of St. Edmund and covered 
it with lead." Barnwell became one of those 
great church houses that were centres of life 
for farmers and lay folk, merchants as well 
as priests. But in the Middle Ages men 
might not carry on trade unless they had 
received leave by charter from their lords, 
or could shew that to do so was an old custom. 
The buying and selling which had grown up 
at the Barnewelle on Midsummer Eve became 
a great fair, but it does not seem to have been 
formally licensed by the King till John 
reigned, though the canons had increased it 
year by year. 



MEDIAEVAL CAMBRIDGE 95 

Another noble building of Norman Cam- 
bridge was the Round Church of which we 
still have the nave, with its beautiful doorway 
covered with (restored) Norman mouldings, and 
its short columns of workmanship as ponderous 
as Peverel's. It was probably built between 
1120 and 1140 by Ralph the Bearded and the 
Brothers of the Holy Sepulchre, an order of 
fighting monks like the Templars, whose 
church in London it resembles in plan. They 
are both plainly the work of men who had 
been to the East and seen there the church of 
the Holy Sepulchre after which they are named. 

Cambridge was still a tiny place when 
Domesday Book was written. It contained 
10 wards but only 373 dwellings. On the 
northern side 27 houses had been pulled 
down to clear a site for William's castle. 
Picot too, the Sheriff, had made himself hated 
by pulling down houses and seizing common 
land to build himself three mills, by Silver 
Street. He added heavily to the dues, the 
three days' ploughing became nine, and the 
" heriot "* " eight pounds, a palfrey, and a 

* Heriot.-A forced gift made by the heir on taking up his 
father's lands, probably a survival of the old practice of gxvrng 
stook with land. 



96 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

complete suit of knightly armour." Besides 
having to take their corn to his mills to be 
ground the people felt the Conquest in other 
ways. The native English Thanes are not 
spoken of in Domesday; they seem to have 
died or been made villeins. Norman knights are 
in their places. William of Malmesbury, the 
chronicler of the Conquest, laments : " Now is 
England become the home of foreigners, the 
hold of strangers ; not one Englishman is 
there now left who is either Earl, Bishop or 
Abbot; strangers be they all"; and this 
seems truer of Cambridgeshire than of other 
parts, for the struggle of Hereward's men met 
punishment by outlawry and dispossession. 
Many of the foreign lords had greater lands 
elsewhere ; and it is said that Cambridgeshire 
" from that day to this has been singularly 
lacking in ' county ' families." 

The growth of the town may have owed 
much at this time to the " King's Jews." The 
Jewry was opposite the Round Church in the 
angle of the High Ward formed by Trinity 
Street and Sidney Street. Jews, accursed by 
crusaders and scattered throughout the world, 
held together then as now like the members of 



MEDIJEVAL CAMBRIDGE 97 

one clan, and were always ready to stand by one 
another or combine forces and funds in pursuit 
of their trade. This unity and their clever- 
ness with money made them the bankers of 
the Middle Ages; kings and other rulers 
found them the best agents for raising large 
sums in sudden cases of need, and took them 
under their special protection. Jews were 
the only men who had capital, and when 
Henry I.'s writ made Cambridge the one port 
of the county they no doubt lent large sums 
to the traders and merchants, and their 
chambers would be filled with their bonds. 
Englishmen are never ready to welcome 
foreigners and the Church then taught them 
to abhor Jews ; as money-lenders and sharp 
creditors these had a third claim to 
envy and malice, and the king's protection 
must have been often needed when the 
servility of the poor Jew or the arrogance of 
the rich one angered their burly English 
debtors and neighbours. Jews were the 
King's servants, and it was from the 
King, Henry IIL, that the burghers ac- 
quired the house of a rich Jew, called 
Benjamin, for a town gaol. Jews were 



98 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

among the first to build stone houses in 
England. 

The life of Cambridge was further enriched 
in Henry the First's reign by the founding 
of the Nunnery of St. Mary and St. Rhadegund. 
This was at first a little cell by the riverside 
where a handful of devout women took refuge 
from the world about 1133, just before the 
troublous times of Stephen. Almost at the 
same date the Hospital of St. John was built 
by Henry Frost, a burgess, for a Master and 
Brethren of the Augustine Order to care for 
the sick and poor townsmen. The old hospital 
has given place to St. John's College, where 
its foundations are still to be seen, and in 
Jesus College part of St. Rhadegund's Church 
and Nunnery remain to form what some think 
the most interesting of all college chapels. 
King Stephen granted to the nuns the right 
to hold a fair in the town, and it soon got the 
name of Garlic Fair. 

In the Jewry and opposite Jesus Lane stood 
the church of All Saints, while a second, "All 
Saints by the Castle," stood across the river 
till at the time of the Black Death it was j| 
deserted, became ruinous, and the haunt of&tf! 



MEDIAEVAL CAMBRIDGE 99 

wild beasts. On the north of the bridge, too, 
were the Norman churches of St. Giles and 
St. Peter. Two ancient arches have been 
kept in St. Giles, one of them the Norman 
chancel arch blessed by the great and meek 
St. Anselm, and a Norman font is in St. Peter's. 
These would be the churches that suffered 
at the hands of a brigand baron in Stephen's 
reign, who posed as a friend of Matilda, and 
against whom Stephen built a stronghold at 
Burwell, of which only the foundations can 
now be seen. This Galfrid de Mandeville 
raided the countryside, sacking Cambridge, 
and " not sparing even the churches." He 
was shot through the head when attacking the 
fort of Burwell, and died "excommunicate 
and unabsolved, nor was the earth suffered 
to give a grave to the sacrilegious offender." 1 

1 Conybeare, Cambridgeshire, p. 114. 






Chapter VIII. 

Monks and Friars 

In Cambridge of the Middle Ages three main 
streets led south and east. Bridge Street 
linked Huntingdon Road with the main road 
to Colchester, known as HadstockWay, with 
Barnwell Gate where the Post Office now 
stands. Westwards from Bridge Street one 
might turn aside at the Jewry into High Ward 
to reach Trumpington Gate ; while nearer 
still to the river ran Milne Street serving the 
Sheriff's and King's mills, and traceable now 
in the lanes on which Trinity Hall and Queens' 
College open. Beyond the Gates were the 
common fields of the southern town, which 
was fortified by a moat or watercourse, 
always known as The King's Ditch, for all 
waters not private were the King's. Starting 
from the King's Mill in Mill Lane it ran by 
way of Pembroke Street and St. Andrew's 
Street to Christ's, and so to Park Street 
and into the river opposite Magdalene. It 
took the place of the walls which surrounded 



102 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

most mediaeval towns. Outside Trumpington 
Gate was the village of Little St. Mary, and 
beyond it, where Downing College now is, the 
common arable " St. Thomas 5 Leas " and the 
common pasture of Coe Fen. Beyond the 
King's Ditch, which crossed Jesus Lane, 
Maid's Causeway ran out between meadow 
and ploughland to Barnwell Priory. 

The following extracts from the book of the 
rules of the monastery give a good idea of the 
life and duties of these Canons. It was 
written in 1295 or 1296, nearly 200 years after 
the foundation of the house, and the rules 
would continue in force until Henry VIII. 
dissolved it. 

CUSTOMS OF AUGUSTINIAN 
CANONS OF BARNWELL PRIORY. 1 

4. The road of Canons Regular is the rule of blessed 
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. 

6. Of the reverence due to the Prelate. 
. . . in the first chapter that he shall hold . . . all officers 
are to prostrate themselves before him and lay their 
keys at his feet. ... In whatever place he passes before 
them they ought to rise and bow, and remain standing. 
. . . Whoever brings him a book, or anything else, ought 

1 Customs of Aug. Canons, J. W. Clark, 1897, Macmillan and 
Bowes. Liber Memorandorum Ecclasiae, de Bernewelle, 
Book viii, Consuetudinarium. 



MONKS AND FRIARS 



103 



to bow. ... To him alone is entrusted the decision as 
to punishment of more serious offences. . . . When 
he is present no brother should leave the precinct 
of the monastery without his permission. Within 
the precinct brethren who go either to the granges, 
the tailor-house, the garden, or the other offices, though 
they have received permission from the Sub-Prior, should 
bow to the Prelate, if he come in, and ask leave of him, 
and intimate to him the permission they had previously 

obtained. 

7. The Prelate ought to be careful that ... he 
neither abuse the high office he has undertaken . . 

nor be lukewarm or remiss For he ought not to 

have honour without trouble. ... He ought to sleep 
with the rest in the Dorter, to eat with them in 
the Frater ... to make his round within and without 
the offices ; for who will then find him to be idle ? . . . 
On all double feasts ... he says first and second 

Evensong, Mattins and High Mass the Prelate 

ought not to ring the bell ; or even give the signal in the 
Dorter to wake the brethren. He must by no means 
presume, without the advice and consent of the Chapter, 
to sell or exchange, to give or alienate, church property as 
lands, tenements ; to expel a brother from the monastery ; 
to receive back one who has been expelled ; to admit a 
novice or a lay-brother ; or to present incumbents to 
vacant churches or vicarages. 

10. Of the Provost who is called Sub-Prior. 

when the Prelate is absent, or even when he is 

present, the Sub-Prior acts as his subordinate. . . . 

It is . . . his duty ... to make his round, in order 

that he may restrain those who are walking to and fro ; 



104 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

and those behaving in an unseemly manner. He should 
specially do this after Compline, when silence will be 
most complete, and no one is allowed to leave the Dorter. 
Then, if it be winter-time, he is to light a lantern, and 
visit different offices round the Cloister, and the Farmery 
also, because at that time neither those who have been 
bled, nor those who are infirm ought to remain there, 
but only the sick who are lying there in bed. He ought also 
to shut the doors round the Cloister, to exclude all 
secular persons, to take the keys with him, and 
deposit them in the Dorter, and so at length sleep with 
the Convent. . . . 

11. . . . the Prelate ought not either to appoint or 
to depose the Sub-Prior without the advice of the 
spiritual brethren, nor except in hearing of the Chapter. 

13. The Precentor, who is also called Librarian . . . 
has charge of the books ... it is part of his duty to 
rule the Quire. ... let no one set their opinion above 
his ; and let no one disturb what he has begun by 
beginning anything else, or by beginning in any other way. 

14. Of the safe keeping of the books. 

The Librarian ... is to take charge of the books of the 
Church ; all which he ought to keep, and to know under 
their separate titles ; and he should frequently examine 
them carefully to prevent any damage or injury from 
insects or decay ... he has to provide the writers with 
parchment, ink and everything else necessary for 
writing ; and personally to hire those who write for 
money. . . . 

The press in which the books are kept ought to be 
lined inside with wood, that the damp of the walls may 
not moisten or stain books. . . , 



MONKS AND FRIARS 105 

Further, as books ought to be mended, printed and 
taken care of by the Librarian, so ought they to be 
properly bound by him. 

15. Of the office of the Sacrist. 

18. Of rising for Mattins. 

Brethren ought to rise for Mattins at midnight. Hence 
the Sub-Sacrist, whose duty it is to regulate the clock, 
ought before then to ring the little bell in the Dorter to 
awaken the Convent. . . . Next, when the lantern has 
been lighted, which one of the younger brethren ought 
to carry in front of them, and a gentle signal has been 
given, they should put on their shoes and their girdles, 
march into Church in procession, and devoutly and 
reverently begin the triple prayer, six at a time. 

20. At daybreak, at a signal from the Warden of the 
Order, all the brethren ought to rise. No one ought to 
remain in bed any longer without a very reasonable 
excuse. When they leave the Dorter, after washing 
their hands and combing their hair, they ought to go to 
the Church before they turn aside to any other place. . . . 
After this, while the priests are preparing themselves for 
private masses, let some attend to the duties assigned 
to them, others take their books and go into the cloister, 
and there read or sing in an undertone. 
Of Novices. 

25. , . . let the master teach him how to keep guard 
over his eyes. After this let him lead the Novice into the 
Quire, and there let him say the Lord's Prayer three 
times on his knees, with as many salutations of the 
Blessed Virgin. Then let his master lead him to his bed 
in the Dorter, and there, if it be needful, let him receive 



106 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

his tunic and girdle, and utter his private prayers. 
Then, returning with his master into the Cloister, or 
rather the Chamber, let him be taught how to behave at 
the whole Mass, always guarding his eyes. After Mass 
let him be taught how he ought to behave at meals, at 
grace before and after, and at the noontide repose if it 
ought to be held, and at Nones. Then let him be taught 
how he ought to behave at Evensong, at Supper, at 
Collation, at Compline, and at the triple prayer ; and 
how, after receiving the holy water, he should cover his 
head and pass through the Cloister to the Dorter, and 
how he is to take off his shoes under his habit. . . . 
Next his master is to be at his side when he goes to bed, 
and shew him how to arrange his habit round about 
him. When it is time to get up for Mattins, the Master 
is to come to the novice, and help him with his clothes 
and shoes, and make him sit before his bed, with his head 
concealed in the depths of his hood. There he is to sit 
and wait for the ringing, and go with the convent into 
the Church, and, when Mattins are over, return with the 
Convent to his bed in the Dorter. . . . Let him honour 
his seniors. Let him learn the signs for the avoidance of 
too much talking. Let him speak in gentle, not in 
clamorous tones ; let his gait be devout, not hurried ; 
let him be pleasant with everybody. 

28. Of Silence. 

Silence is to be kept according to the Rule (of St. Augus- 
tine) in the Church, the Dorter, the Cloister, and the 
Frater ; but it may be broken in the event of four 
accidents, namely : robbers or thieves ; sickness ; fire 
and workmen. Moreover, it may be broken for the sake 



MONKS AND FRIARS 107 

of a King or Princess, an Archbishop or a Bishop. . . . 
Silence is to be kept in the Cloister from morning till 
after Chapter ; but after Chapter, if no Hour follow 
immediately, the brethren may have leave in each day for 
talking in the Cloister, which may last until the ringing 
of the Hour (Service) preceding High Mass. . . . 

29. Of the Chapter. 

The Chapter-House is a place for confession, necessary 
to the soul, but hateful to devils. As brethren sin daily, 
they ought to come daily to the Chapter-House, that they 
may there amend their daily faults. ... No one ought 
to offer any defence of an accused brother, or even to 
speak unless called upon. . . . 

A matter that has been once settled by the Chapter 
ought not to be again unsettled without the consent of 
the Chapter. 

30. Of Processions. 

All the brethren ought to assemble for all the processions 
on Sundays, and other solemn processions. All those 
who have been bled, all the officers, and even the infirm 
or feeble, who can be present without danger, ought to 
come to the blessing of water and to the procession. . . . 
In the Sunday procession round the Cloister the bearer 
of the holy water ought always to go first ; next those 
who carry the cross and the tapers ; next after them the 
Sub-Deacon with the book ; the Deacon next after him ; 
lastly, the Priest. The Convent, the juniors at their 
head, are to follow at a slow pace ; the Prelate, turning 
neither to the right nor to the left, but walking in the 
middle of the path, will be the last in the procession. 
On all Wednesdays and Fridays throughout Lent, 



108 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

the convent ought to walk round the Cloister without 
shoes. 

31. Of the Fraterer. 

It is the duty of the Fraterer to lay the table-cloths . . . 
to set clean salt on each table in clean salt-cellars, and 
if it should have got damp, to serve it out for use in the 
kitchen, dry and wipe out with a cloth the damp salt- 
cellars, and so set on clean salt. . . . He ought also to 
fetch bread for the use of the brethren from the cellar, 
and to be careful that the bread is clean and not burnt, 
nor gnawed by mice, nor dirty. . . . The jugs ought to 
be washed inside and out once a week ; and the Frater 
ought to be cleaned thoroughly with besoms as often as it 
requires it. The Almoner will provide baskets and 
besoms for collecting the remnants of the table. . . . 

The Fraterer ought also to provide mats and rushes to 
strew the Frater and the alleys of the Cloister at the 
Frater door, and frequently to renew them ; in summer 
to throw flowers, mint and fennel into the air to make 
a sweet odour ; in summer to provide fans. When cups 
and spoons are broken he is to get them mended, and 
he is to count them every day to see that none are 
missing, and at night to lay them up in a safe place. 

32. In the Frater. 

While the brethren are sitting at table . . . they 
ought to speak sparingly, and not to let their eyes 
wander. . . . No one is allowed to exchange fish for 
meat ; no one may whittle, or write, or look at a book 
... no one may rise from table or leave the room, or 
fetch anything for himself from the hatch. No one may 
come in after the second dish has been set on the table. 



MONKS AND FRIARS 109 

... If both dishes, or one of them, be found to be 
spotted with dirt, let an alternative be provided. 

The servitors are to serve the food quickly and 
actively, not running or jumping in an unbecoming 
fashion, and they are to hold the dishes neither too high 
nor too low, but so that the food may be seen by him 
who carries it. The dishes are not to be broken, or dirty, 
or unsuitable, or smeared on the under side. The 
servitor should use both hands, and carry only a single 
dish, except when he is serving eggs. If he cannot bring 
the brethren all they ask for, he ought, nevertheless, to 
reply to them civilly. . . . There is to be no talking at 
the kitchen-hatch, because the noise might be heard by 
the brethren. 

33. The Dorter. 

A brother may enter the Dorter as often as he has need 
to do so, but he ought not to linger there unless he wish 
to change his sheets or to make his bed. 

34. Respect due to the Convent. 

When the Convent is talking no secular ought to come 
near nor even to stand at a distance listening and looking 
towards them. 

Should the Convent go beyond the precincts in pro- 
cession, they ought to be preceded by cross, candles, and 
so forth ; and their freemen ought to turn out of their 
path any horses and carts advancing in an opposite 
direction, in order to prevent them passing through the 
midst of the Convent, or to stop them until the Convent 
have passed by. 

35. Of the Almoner and his kindness. 

The Almoner ought to be kind, compassionate and God- 
fearing. He ought also to be discreet and careful in 



110 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

making his apportionments. He ought to endow with a 
more copious largess pilgrims, palmers, chaplains, 
beggars, lepers. Old men and those who are decrepit, 
and lame, and blind, or who are confined to their beds, 
he ought frequently to visit, and give them suitable 
relief. 

40. Of the Grainger and of the Receivers. 
All the property of the monastery, both in corn and in 
money . . . passes through the hands of the Grainger 
and the Receivers. Whatever belongs to bread and 
beer, to seed or allowance, ought to come out of the 
granary ; whatever belongs to money ought to be 
handed out of the treasury by the hands of the Receivers. 

The Grainger ought ... to set down on tallies all the 
profits of the manors, and to write out tallies of each. . . . 
The Receivers ought to do the same by help of tallies 
and rolls, and when the Prelate chooses, lay a final 
account before the Convent. 

41. Of the Hosteller. 

... it becomes him to have not merely facility of 
expression, but also elegant manners and a respectable 
bringing up . . . for friends are multiplied by agreeable 
words. . . perfect cleanliness and propriety should be 
found in his department, namely, to keep clean cloths 
and clean towels ; cups without flaws ; spoons of silver ; 
mattresses, blankets, sheets not merely clean but 
untorn ; proper pillows ; quilts to cover the beds of 
full width and length and pleasing to the eyes of those 
who enter the room ; a proper laver of metal ; a basin 
clean both inside and out ; in winter a candle and 
candlesticks ; fire that does not smoke; writing materials, 



MONKS AND FRIARS 111 

clean salt ... the whole Guest-house kept clear of 
spiders-webs and dirt, and strewn with rushes under- 
foot ; . . . a sufficient quantity of straw in the beds ; 
keys and locks to the doors, and good bolts on the 
inside, so as to keep the doors securely closed while the 
guests are asleep. 

42. Of the Chamberlain. 

It is the chief duty of the Chamberlain to provide warm 
water for the shaving of the Convent, and soap for 
washing their heads. He is to provide soap for the baths 
of the brethren, if it be asked for. 

The Chamberlain ought to provide a laundress of good 
character and good reputation to wash the garments of 
the Convent. She must be able properly to mend and 
wash all the linen of the brethren, namely, surplices, 
rochets, sheets, shirts and drawers. The linen ought to 
be washed once a fortnight in summer and once in three 
weeks in winter. 

44. Of the Master of the Farmery. 
The Master of the Farmery . . . who ought to have the 
care of the sick, ought to be gentle, good tempered, kind, 
compassionate to the sick, and willing to gratify their 
needs with affectionate sympathy. It should rarely or 
never happen that he has not ginger, cinnamon, peony, 
and the like, ready in his cupboard. . . . 

No secular ought to enter the Farmery . . . women 
never. Physicians, however, may enter, and take their 
meals with the sick if they have obtained leave. 

The Master of the Farmery ought frequently to . . . 
ask them, with kindly interest, whether they wish for 
anything. . . . Further, he should provide ... a fire 



112 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

on the hearth, should the state of the weather require it, 
a candle, a cresset, and a lamp to burn all night ; and 
everything that is necessary, useful and proper. 

52. Of Lay -brethren. 

Lay-brethren are not to be admitted to the habit, unless 
they are instructed in some craft which is useful to the 
monastery ; for, as regular Canons ought to be occupied 
day and night in things spiritual, so lay-brethren ought 
to labour for the profit of the Church in things corporeal ; 
for in a monastery no one ought to eat his bread unless 
he work for it. 

Of the Chapter (from Customs of St. Victor). 

He who makes an accusation is first to say : " I accuse 
such or such a brother." The accused . . is to answer 
nothing from his place, but to come in front of the Abbot, 
to bend the knee, and then, standing upright, to await 
patiently ... if he is not conscious of it he is to say 
briefly ..." My lord, I do not remember that I did or 
said what my brother mentions." Then his accuser may 
not repeat his accusation, and the accused, if the Abbot 
so direct, may go and sit down. . . . When anybody 
has to receive discipline, he is to rise to his knees and 
modestly divest himself of his garments. Then, bending 
forward, he is to remain covered with the same garments 
from his girdle downwards, and as he lies there he is either 
to be completely silent or to say merely : " It is my fault, 
and I will amend myself." Meanwhile no other brother 
is to speak unless one of the Priors should humbly inter- 
cede for him ; and he who flogs him is not to cease from 
flogging till the Abbot bids him. When he has ceased, 
he is to help the brother to put on his clothes ; who. 



MONKS AND FRIARS 113 

clothed and standing upright, is not to stir till the Abbot 
says : " Go and sit down/' Then he is to bow, and go to 
his place. 

Ely had long been another of these great 
houses. Since Hereward's day Normans from 
1081 to 1199 were building its magnificent 
cathedral, and in Ely, Barnwell and Cambridge 
had a keen rival. Ely was a centre for 
pilgrimage and the first good harbour for 
incoming ships, but Cambridge at the Con- 
quest became the seat of the King's Sheriff 
who had to gather his dues from towns and 
traders. When men might trade at Soham or 
Reach, Bottisham or Ely, just as they chose, it 
would be hard for the Sheriff's men to make 
sure that no little boats escaped them, and the 
King's dues must often have gone unpaid. 
This, rather than care for the welfare of Cam- 
bridge, probably caused Henry I. to issue a 
writ addressed to all great people who might 
raise claims to levy dues in any part of the 
county. It runs : — 

" Henry, King of the English to Hervey, 
Bishop of Ely, and all his Barons of Cam- 
bridgeshire, Greeting : I forbid that any boat 
shall ply at any hithe in Cambridgeshire, save 



114 



LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 



at the hithe of my borough of Cambridge, 
nor shall barges be laden save in the borough 
of Cambridge, nor shall any take toll else- 
where but only there ; and whosoever shall 
do forfeit in the borough, let him there do 




Hat)ot 

Carobriclq' 

Castle. 



right ; but if any do otherwise, I command 
that he be at right thereof before my justice 
when I command that there be plea thereof. 
As witnesses : the Chancellor and Miles of 
Gloucester and Richard Basset at London." 1 

1 See Cambridge Borough Charters. — Bateson. 



MONKS AND FRIARS 115 

The effect of this writ must have been to 
decide the rivalry in favour of Cambridge by 
drawing all the shipping away from Ely : 
perhaps it was now that the wares at St. 
Awdry's Fair became "tawdry," being re- 
duced to such light trifles as could be carried 
overland, while the heavy goods went up by 
barge to the hithes that lined the banks of 
the Cam above and below Magdalene Bridge. 
Cambridge became in practice a Staple town, 
the only channel of trade for the countryside, 
and the burgesses waxed fat accordingly. 
Soon they began to try to shake off the hand 
of the Sheriff in money matters. The way 
to do this, which was becoming usual since 
London had set the example in 1100, was to 
get leave from the King to " farm " x the dues 
which the town had to pay to him. Such 
dues were the " haw gavel," a small rent on 
each house, the " land gavel," a rent on the 
strips of the plough land, a payment for the 
right to have a market and the tolls which 
were taken there, the fees paid by men who 
had to go to the King's court for justice, pay- 

1 To farm the taxes was to have the right of collecting all 
dues from the burghers on condition of paying a fixed round 
sum yearly to the king ; as publicans did in Palestine to Caesar. 



116 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

nients to the King's miller for grinding corn in 
his mill, and so on. These three last might vary 
very much from year to year ; if, instead of 
them, a lump sum of a fixed amount were 
to be paid year by year, both parties might 
gain. The king would be certain what revenue 
he could expect; and if the tolls, etc., increased, 
the town would reap the benefit by collecting 
them themselves. Thus somewhere between 
1161 and 1189 the men of Cambridge must 
have asked for this privilege, for there is a 
charter from Henry II. granting the town 
the right to " farm " the dues : — 

" Henry by the grace of God King of 
England and Duke of Normandy and Aqui- 
taine and Count of Anjou, to his Justices, 
Sheriffs, and all his Ministers and faithful 
people Greeting. Know ye that I have 
delivered at farm to my burgesses of Cam- 
bridge, my town of Cambridge to be holden 
of me in chief by the same farm which my 
Sheriffs were wont to render to me, and so 
that they themselves do answer therefor at 
my exchequer. And therefore I command 
that ye guard and maintain the said bur- 
gesses and all things to them belonging as 



MONKS AND FRIARS 



117 



though they were mine own, so that no one 
may in any wise cause to them injury or 
damage or grievance. For I will not that 
they answer therefor to any but to me and 
at my Exchequer. As Witness : Roger the 
son of Reinfrid at Quevilly." * 




Viww of Cartridge CaatU, koto a* atjcutf ctoir,g supposed, 
toljaveteci? draun) about G>e reuju of Queer) -EU^eH). 

This charter marks in a sense the beginning 
of the self-governing life of the town. Hence- 
forth it is a tenant in chief of the king ; the 
Sheriff, while he still held the King's court in 
the borough had no longer any excuse for 

» The King was this year in Normandy; his hunting seat was 
at Quevilly. 



118 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

meddling with its trade or making any exac- 
tions on the burgesses. It is quite in keeping 
with Henry II. 's treatment of his sheriffs, 
whose power he sternly checked. Before his 
reign they were usually local men and used 
their local influence to make themselves 
almost strong enough to defy the King, often 
too their sons succeeded them. To prevent 
this Henry in 1167 had removed every sheriff 
in England from his office, replacing only the 
upright among them, and sending even those 
to fresh counties. 

It is to be noted that this charter does not 
give the right for good, but only for the king's 
reign, unless it were renewed. The final 
grant or " fee farm " was given by King John. 

Thus the most opposite interests, those of 
the King, the Prior and Nun, the down- 
trodden Shylock of the Jewry, the worldly- 
minded, comfortable burgher, and the grasp- 
ing Norman noble, all played their part in 
developing the wealth and fame of the new 
royal port of Cambridge. 

Hitherto history has rarely recorded the 
life of the people, but now and then when 
some king moves across the stage " the light 



MONKS AND FRIARS 119 

that beats upon a throne " throws the hum- 
bler, attendant figures into relief. 

King John is such an one. In the second 
year of his reign he granted a charter which 
confirmed the old rights and gave important 
new ones to the townsmen : — 

I. That they should have a gild of merchants [a most 
important right which was often the beginning of self- 
government]. 

II. That no burgess should plead without the walls 
of the borough of any plea, save pleas of exterior tenure 
(except the King's moneyers and servants). 

III. That no burgess should make duel ; [i.e. trial by 
battle] and that with regard to pleas of the Crown the 
burgesses might defend themselves according to the 
ancient custom of the borough. [Probably by bringing 
a certain number of neighbours to swear to their up- 
rightness.] 

IV. That all burgesses of the merchants' gild should 
be free of toll, passage, lastage, pontage, and stallage in 
the fair, and without, and throughout the ports of the 
English Sea, and in all the King's lands on this side of the 
sea, and beyond the sea (saving in all things the liberties 
of the City of London). [Toll = a payment to the 
King ; passage = payment made by a passenger ; 
lastage = payment on every load passing ; pontage = 
payment for crossing bridge ; stallage =-= payment 
for right to erect a booth to sell goods.] 

V. That no burgess should be judged to be in mercy 
as to his money, except according to the ancient law of 



120 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

the borough which they had in the time of the King's 
ancestors. [To be in mercy =» to be liable to fine.] 

VI. That the burgesses should have justly all their 
lands and tenures, wages, and debts, whosoever may owe 
the same, and that right should be done to them of their 
lands and tenures within the borough, according to the 
custom thereof. 

VII. That of all the debts of burgesses that should 
be contracted at Cambridge and of the pledges there 
made, the pleas should be holden at Cambridge. 

VIII. That if anyone in all the King's dominions 
should take toll or custom of the men of Cambridge of the 
merchants' gild, and should not make satisfaction, the 
Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, or the Reeve of Cambridge 
should take therefor a distress at Cambridge (saving in all 
things the liberties of the City of London). 

IX. That for the amendment [upkeep] of the borough, 
the burgesses should have a fair in Rogation Week, with 
all its liberties as they were accustomed to have. 

X. That all the burgesses of Cambridge might be free 
of yereshive and scotale if the King's Sheriff or any other 
Bailiff had made scotale. [Yereshive or Geares-Gifu 
was an annual gift or exaction commonly required by 
Sheriffs : Scot-ale a feast at which only the Sheriff's ale 
might be drunk. In a second Charter, of the year 1207 
King John granted the farm for good or " in fee-farm."] 

XI. That the burgesses might have all other liberties 
and free customs which they had in the time of the King's 

* ancestors, when they had them better or more freely. 

XII. That if any customs should be unlawfully levied 
in war, they should be quashed. 



MONKS AND FRIARS 121 

XIII. That whosoever should come to the borough of 
Cambridge with his merchandise, of whatever place, 
whether stranger or otherwise, might come, tarry, and 
return in safety, and without disturbance, rendering the 
right customs. 

XIV. That anyone causing injury, loss or trouble, to 
the burgesses, should forfeit £10 to the King. 

XV. That the burgesses and their heirs, might have 
and hold the foregoing liberties, of the King and his 
heirs, peaceably, freely, quietly, entirely, and honour- 
ably in all things. 

In this year 1201 John lodged for a night 
or so at Barnwell Priory. Its Early English 
Church to St. Giles and St. Andrew, with its 
central tower, unhappily struck by lightning 
in 1287, formed the heart of a great group of 
buildings, standing amid fields and groves 
by the waterside, where a ferry crossed to 
Chesterton. Behind the church lay Maids' 
Causeway, while between road and river stood 
the farmery, and the Canons' land stretched 
out to the site of Stourbridge Fair. The Fair 
brought crowds of merchants and drovers, 
fishermen with oysters and herrings from 
Colchester, etc., whose tolls no doubt made a 
good sum. 

But the crowd would also bring beggars 
and vagabonds, as the races do now, and 



122 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

so certain Friars of St. Mary Magdalene 
set up a refuge for those most miserable 
of all wanderers, the lepers. Camp-followers 
of the Crusaders spread this Eastern 
disease all over Europe at this time. 
Charity for their distress and a wise care for 
the health of the town were no doubt equal 
motives for the rule by which they were for- 
bidden to pass through Barnwell to go within 
two miles of Cambridge. King John sup- 
ported this regulation by granting to the 
friars the dues of the fair to be held in the 
close of the leper's hospital of St. Mary Mag- 
dalene at Stourbridge, and at the same time 
authorised the Prior and Canons of Barnwell 
to hold Midsummer Fair. Stourbridge Fair 
was to be held on the Vigil and Feast of Holy 
Cross, which would begin on September 7th. 
By Barnwell Station still stands the hospital 
chapel raised by those friars, a solid stone 
building made for long use, but with the rare 
decoration of a hooded doorway and windows 
with fine Norman work. Though we have no 
lepers now we might well use it for other 
needs. Many are glad to have it lit and cared 
for in God's service again. 



MONKS AND FRIARS 123 

Not far away on the road to Ely stood 
another Norman house built by other Bene- 
dictines, Denny Abbey, perhaps the finest 
piece of Norman work in the county ; it 
passed into the hands of Templars, and later 
became a nunnery. It is now a farmhouse. 

Much later than the Benedictine monks and 
Austin Canons, whose houses since Saxon Eng- 
land became Christian had been springing up 
all over the land, there had come to Cambridge 
in the 13th century new streams of puritanic 
Christians, the friars. Sworn like the early 
monks to poverty, they differed from them 
in their aims, which were, not by leaving the 
world to rescue their own souls, or by cease- 
less prayers to atone for the worldliness of 
others, but to go about the world doing good 
and preaching to the poor. Already in 1201 
the Friars of St. Mary Magdalene were caring 
for the lepers at Barnwell, and in 1224 the 
Grey Friars came to Cambridge. These had 
been founded by the devoted, gentle St. 
Francis of Assisi, and lived in the Old Syna- 
gogue ; fifty years later they began to build 
" a noble church " where Sidney Sussex now 
is. 



124 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

These Franciscans were vowed to complete 
poverty ; and in Cambridge, as elsewhere, they 
settled in the poorest quarter. The con- 
temporary account, written by T. of Eccleston, 
says : 

" At Cambridge the brethren were at first received by 
the burgesses who made over to them an old synagogue 
near the prison. The neighbourhood of the prison, how- 
ever, was intolerable to the brethren, since both they 
and the gaolers had to use the same entrance ; so our lord 
the King gave them 10 marks, with which they were 
able to buy out the lease from the Court of Exchequer. 
Then they built a chapel so very poor that one carpenter 
made and set up in one day fourteen pairs of rafters. 
So on the feast of St. Lawrence (Aug. 10th), though 
there were as yet but three brethren, namely, Brother 
William of Esseby, and Brother Hugh of Bugeton, 
both clerics, and a novice named Brother Elias, who was 
so lame that he had to be carried into the choir, they 
sang the office solemnly according to note, and the 
novice wept so much that the tears ran freely down his 
face. Now this novice afterwards died a most holy 
death at York." . . . 

" The first guardian of Cambridge was Brother Thomas, 
of Spain." 

" The custody of Cambridge was particularly remark- 
able for its want of temporal goods, so much so that at 
the time of his first Visitation of England, Brother 
Albert of Pisa found the brethren ... to be without 
mantles." 



MONKS AND FRIARS 125 

Other reformers followed, the Austin Friars 
settling on Peashill, the Carmelites or White 
Friars on the site of Queens'. Before the end 
of the century the Pope's " Black Dogs," the 
Dominicans, took up their place outside 
Barnwell Gate, opposite Dowdiver's lane. 

The Fairs 

In the commercial as well as the religious 
life of Cambridge, monks and friars played 
their part. At the great religious festivals, to 
which pilgrims from all parts of England and 
from abroad used to flock, fairs were held. In 
Cambridge there were four. The oldest seems 
to have been Midsummer Fair, held " from 
the time of which the memory of man does not 
run." The name suggests that it may even 
have been a survival of pagan, midsummer 
revels. However that may be, this fair came 
under the sanction of the church. The Prior 
and convent of Barnwell held a charter from 
Henry III., dated 1229, giving them the right 
to hold this fair. In 1298, the Prior having 
seized the goods of a felon who had fled from 
the fair, the Mayor challenged his jurisdiction ; 



126 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

but the following agreement was reached 
between them : 

I. That all who lived within the town or liberties of 
Cambridge, and who, according to the custom of the 
town, sustained or were obliged to sustain the burdens 
arising in the town, as in watches, tallages, scotages, 
suits of court, and other contributions, should be free in 
the said fair of stallage, boothage and toll. 

II. That the goods of thieves, fugitives and cutpurses, 
if any such should be thereafter taken, or found in the 
said Fair by the Prior or his bailiffs, should be immedi- 
ately delivered to the bailiffs of the town, and that the 
burgesses of Cambridge should indemnify the Prior and 
Convent for so doing. 

III. That all who live in the town and liberties, and 
do not bear nor are obliged to bear the duties or perform 
the services before mentioned, should be as much obliged 
to the Customs of the Fair as those that come from any 
other place. 

This agreement left the Mayor the un- 
challenged authority for the keeping of the 
peace within and without the town. In the 
next year the Prior's right to hold the Fair 
at all was inquired into by the king's Itinerant 
Justices under the act of " Quo Warranto," 
passed twenty years earlier. He produced 
Henry III.'s charter, and his right was allowed. 
It seems to have been exercised peacefully for 
two hundred years ; then in 1496, " the Prior 



MONKS AND FRIARS 127 

and Convent of Barnwell leased for one year 
to the Mayor and bailiffs, the Fair called 
Barnwell Fair." 1 

Another fair, said to have been called 
" Garlic Fair," was granted to the nuns of 
St. Rhadegund and held in the summer. 

A third fair is said by Carter to have been 
held " in the town of Cambridge " in Rogation 
Week ; the town certainly enjoyed the profits 
of a fair held at Reach in that week. But by 
far the most important fair of all was that of 
Steersbrigge, or Stourbridge. This fair had 
been granted by King John to the Friars of 
St. Mary Magdalene for the support of the 
Leper Hospital which they had built. In 
early times this fair opened on the 7th of 
September, and lasted until Michaelmas. By 
the time of Elizabeth, it begins on the Feast 
of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, i.e. August 
24. A full account of the fair is given by 
Carter : 

" Near half a mile east of this village [Barnwell] Stur- 
bridge Fair is kept, which is set out annually on St. Bar- 
tholomew by the Mayor, Aldermen, and the rest of the 
Corporation of Cambridge ; who all ride thither in a 
grand procession, with music playing before them, and 

Cooper's Annals of Cambridge. 




XWaj cl /5toirrbridaBTair f takK;i7J.? 



MONKS AND""fRIARS 129 

most of the boys in the town on horseback after them, 
who, as soon as the ceremony is read over, ride races 
about the place ; when returning to Cambridge each boy 
has a cake and some ale at the Town Hall. On the 7th 
of September they ride in the same manner to proclaim 
it ; which being done, the Fair begins, and continues 
three weeks ; though the greatest part is over in a fort- 
night. 

§ 14. " This Fair, which was thought some years ago 
to be the greatest in Europe, is kept in a cornfield, about 
half a mile square, having the River Cam running on the 
north side thereof, and the rivulet called the Stour (from 
which and the bridge over it the Fair received its name) 
on the east side, and it is about two miles east of Cam- 
bridge market-place ; where, during the Fair, coaches, 
chaises, and chariots attend to carry persons to the Fair. 
The chief diversions at Sturbridge are drolls, rope- 
dancing, and sometimes a music-booth ; but there is an 
Act of Parliament which prohibits the acting of plays 
within fifteen miles of Cambridge. 1 

§ 15. "If the field (on which the Fair is kept) is not 
cleared of the corn by the 24th of August, the builders 
may trample it underfoot to build their booths ; and, on 
the other hand, if the same be not cleared of the booths 
and materials belonging thereto by Michaelmas Day at 
noon, the plough-men may enter the same with their 
horses, ploughs, and carts, and destroy whatever they 
find on the premises. The filth, dung, straw, etc., left 
behind by the fair-keepers, make amends for their 
trampling and hardening of the ground. 

1 This Act continued to be enforced till the middle of the 
nineteenth century. 



130 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

§ 16. " The shops or booths are built in rows like 
streets, having each their name ; as Garlick Row, Book- 
sellers' -row, Cook-row, etc. And every commodity has 
its proper place, as the Cheese Fair, Hop Fair, Wool Fair, 
etc. ; and here, as in several other streets or rows, are all 
sorts of traders, who sell by wholesale or retail, as gold- 
smiths, toy-men, brasiers, turners, milliners, haber- 
dashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers, china 
warehouses, and, in a word, most trades that can be 
found in London, from whence many of them come. 
Here are also taverns, coffee-houses, and eating-houses 
in great plenty, and all kept in booths, in any of which 
(except the coffee-booth) you may at any time be ac- 
commodated with hot or cold roast goose, roast or boiled 
pork, etc. 

§ 17. " Crossing the main road at the south end of 
Garlick Row, and a little to the left hand, is a great 
Square, formed of the largest booths, called the Duddery, 
the area of which Square is from 240 to 300 feet, chiefly 
taken up with woollen drapers, wholesale tailors, and 
sellers of second-hand clothes ; x where the dealers have a 
room before their booths, to take down and open their 
packs, and bring in waggons to load and unload the same. 
In the centre of this Square was (till within these three 
years) erected a tall May -pole, with a vane at the top ; 
and in this Square, on the two chief Sundays during the 
fair, both forenoon and afternoon, Divine Service is read, 

1 The special development of the woollen trade in this fair is 
said (by Fuller) to have been due to certain traders from Kendal 
in Westmorland (famed through many centuries for its manu- 
facture of cloth), who were here weather-bound on their way to 
the great entrepot at Norwich, and found a ready sale for the 
goods which they spread out to dry. 



MONKS AND FRIARS 131 

and a sermon preached from a pulpit placed in the open 
air, by the Minister of Barnwell ; who is very well paid 
for the same by the contribution of the fair-keepers. 

§ 18. "In this Duddery only, it is said, there have 
been sold £100,000 worth of woollen manufacturers in less 
than a week's time ; besides the prodigious trade carried 
on here, by the wholesale tailors from London, and most 
other parts of England, who transact their business 
wholly in their pocket-books, and meeting here their 
chapmen from all parts, make up their accounts, receive 
money chiefly in bills, and take further orders. These, 
they say, exceed by far the sale of goods actually brought 
to the Fair, and delivered in kind ; it being frequent for 
the London wholesale men to carry back orders from 
their dealers for £10,000 worth of goods a man, and some 
much more. And once in this Duddery, it is said, there 
was a booth consisting of six apartments, all belonging to 
a dealer in Norwich stuffs only, who had there above 
£20,000 worth of those goods. 

§ 19. " The trade for wool, hops, and leather here is 
prodigious ; the quantity of wool only sold at one fair is 
said to have amounted to £50,000 or £60,000, and of 
hops very little less. 

" September 14, being the Horse Fair day, is the day 
of the greatest hurry, when it is almost incredible to con- 
ceive what number of people there are, and the quantity 
of victuals that day consumed by them. 

" During the Fair, Colchester oysters and white her- 
rings, just coming into season, are in great request, at 
least by such as live in the inland parts of the kingdom, 
where they are seldom to be had fresh, especially the 
latter. 



132 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

§ 20. " The Fair is like a well-governed city ; and less 
disorder and confusion to be seen there than in any other 
place where there is so great a concourse of people : here 
is a Court of Justice always open from morning till night, 
where the Mayor of Cambridge, or his Deputy, sits as 
Judge, determining all controversies in matters arising 
from the business of the Fair, and seeing the Peace there- 
of kept ; for which purpose he hath eight servants, called 
Red-coats, attending him during the time of the Fair and 
other public occasions, one or other of which are con- 
stantly at hand in most parts of the Fair : and if any 
dispute arise between buyer and seller, on calling out 
4 Red-coat,' you have instantly one or more come running 
to you ; and if the dispute is not quickly decided, the 
offender is carried to the said Court, where the case is 
decided in a summary way, from which sentence there 
lies no appeal. 

§ 21. " About two or three days after the Horse Fair 
day, when the hurry of the wholesale business is over, the 
country gentry for about ten or twelve miles round begin 
to come in with their sons and daughters ; and though 
diversion is what chiefly brings them, yet it is not a little 
money they lay out among the tradesmen, toy-shops, 
etc., besides what is flung away to see the puppet shows, 
drolls, rope-dancing, live creatures, etc., of which there 
is commonly plenty. 

§ 22. " The last observation I shall make concerning 
this Fair is, how inconveniently a multitude of people are 
lodged there who keep it ; their bed (if I may so call it) 
is laid on two or three boards, nailed to four pieces that 
bear it about a foot from the ground, and four boards 
round it, to keep the persons and their clothes from falling 



MONKS AND FRIARS 133 

off, and is about five feet long, standing abroad all day if 
it rains not. At night it is taken into their booths, and 
put in to the best manner they can ; at bed-time they get 
into it, and lie neck and heels together until the morning, 
if the wind and rain do not force them out sooner ; for a 
high wind often blows down their booths, as it did a.d. 
1741, and a heavy rain forces through the hair-cloth that 
covers it. 

§ 23. " Though the Corporation of Cambridge has the 
tolls of this Fair, 1 and the government as aforesaid, yet 
the body of the University has the oversight of the 
weights and measures thereof (as well as at Midsum- 
mer 2 and Reach Fairs 3 ) and the licensing of all show- 
booths, live creatures, etc. ; and the Proctors of the 
University keep a Court there also to hear complaints 
about weights and measures, and see that their Gowns- 
men commit no disorders." 

The great concourse of people to this fair 
brought much fame and profit to the town, 
helping to spread its European repute of the 

1 The tolls were originally granted (by King John) to the 
Lepers' Hospital at Stourbridge. 

2 Midsummer Fair is held on Midsummer Common, between 
Cambridge and Barnwell, and was of old connected with 
Barnwell Priory. The Common derives its name from the fair. 

3 Reach is situated at the Fenward extremity of the Devil's 
Dyke, and is about seven miles from Cambridge: It is now 
quite a small village, but its position made it a place of great 
importance in early times. A Roman villa has been unearthed 
there, and local tradition declares that the place once possessed 
seven churches. Its situation at the River Gate of the Icenian 
and East Anglian realms must have made it from the first a 
place of traffic, and its Fair remained famous for many centuries. 



134 LIFE IN OLD CAMBRIDGE 

place among classes other than merely intel- 
lectual, especially in the Empire and the Low 
Countries, where the sacks of English wool 
were worked up into bales of cloth, until 
English merchants began to compete in this 
stuff. 

With the Renaissance and the religious 
changes of the sixteenth century, the system 
of fairs began to yield place to the use of 
permanent shops, and in 1516 the burgesses of 
Cambridge got control of Stourbridge Fair. 
The award runs " the mayor, bailiffs and 
burgesses and their successors for evermore 
shall have, hold and enjoy, keep and maintain 
the said fair called Stibridge Fair . . . yearly 
from the feast of St. Bartholomew to the feast 
of St. Michael the Arcangel in September." 



Index 



Aermeswerk p. 39 

Africa 23, 28 

Akeman Street 29 

Albert of Pisa 124 

Alderman 53, 57, 59, 69, 127 

Aldreth 78 

Alfred 57, 61 

Aller 57 

All Saints 98 

„ by the Castle 98 
Almoner 109 
Alps 46 

Angles, Angle -kin, Anglians 
33, 37, 38, 39, 41, 50, 56, 
64 
Anna, King of East Anglia, 

c. 650 42, 43, 44, 50 
Arab 23 

Archseological Museum 26 
Ashdon 64 
Asia 23 

Assandun, Battle of 64, 65 
Athelney 57 
Augustine, Benedictine monk 

41 
Augustinian Canons, followers 
of Augustine of Hippo in 
Africa, c. 410 91, 98 
Austin (^Augustinian) Friars 

125 
Avebury rings 8 
Aylwine, bishop 76 



B. 

Babylon 12 
Bailey 88 

Balk, a grass line to divide 
strips of ploughland 54 
Balsham 13, 62 
Bardsey 47 
Barking 44 

Barnwell 10, 91, 92, 94, 102, 
121, 125 

„ field 39 

„ Fair 94 

„ Gate 100 
Barrington 63 
Beakers 10 

Bede, the Venerable, a Bene- 
dictine monk, first Eng- 
lish historian 41, 49 
Bedford 3 

Benedictine 49, 123 

Berkshire downs 8, 25 

Bishops 29, 32, 70 

Black Death 98 

Blackwater River 59 

Booksellers' Row 130 

Borough 88, 92 

Bottisham 46, 113 

Boudica (Boadicea) 20 

Bourn Manor 88 

Bourne Rivulet 64 

Bradmore Field 39 

Brand Ditch 13 

Brandon 3, 6, 13, 77 



135 



136 



INDEX 



Brakelands 6 

Brent Ditch 13 

Bretwalda 41 

Bridge Street 100 

Brie, town in N.E. France 

44,45 
Brihtmer Budde 66 
Britain 11, 15, 16, 17, 21, 

28, 31, 33 
Brithnoth 59, 60, 62 
British Thieves 41, 43 
Britons 11, 13, 18, 20, 26, 

29, 31, 33, 38 

„ Groans of the 32 
Bronze Age 6 
Bruneswald 84 
Bucks 56 
Budde 66 
Bullhithe Gate 76 
Burgesses 116, 119-21 
Burwell 99 
Bury St. Edmunds 50, 56 

c. 

Caesar 15, 16, 22, 25, 31 

Cam 1, 5, 37, 38, 64, 75 

Cambridge-shire 5, 6, 13, 
20, 23, 31, 32, 33, 34, 45, 
50, 51, 55, 56, 57, 58, 62, 
68, 74, 113, 121-138 

Camps 11,12,21,30 

Canons 92, 102 

Canterbury 44 

Caradoc 17, 19 

Carme Field 39 

Carmelites 125 

Castle 86-8, 91 
„ hill 1, 29, 30 



Caswallon 1 7 
Causeway 77, 78, 86 
Celtic 46 
Centurion 26 
Chamberlain 111 
Chapter 107, 112 
Chariot 25 
Charlemagne 47 
Charter 94, 117, 126 
Cheese Fair 130 
Chester 20, 21 
„ ford 20, 38 
„ ton 29, 38, 92, 121 
„ ton Lane 22, 88 
Chilterns 8, 56 
China 12 
Christian 26-8, 32, 41, 43, 

44 
Christien 65, 75, 123 
Church 28, 72 
thatched 89 
Cloister 104 
Cloth 131 note 
Cnut 65-7 
Coe Fen 102 
Cohort 29 

Colchester 20, 100, 121, 131 
Compline 104 
Confessor, Edward the 68, 

74 
Conquest, the Norman 74, 

75 
Constantine, Emperor of 

Rome, a.d. 305 29 
Constantinople 29 
Cook-row 130 
Corporation 127, 133 
Cottenham 26 



INDEX 



137 



Count of the Saxon Shore 

21, 29, 55 
Court of Exohequer 124 

,, Justice 132 
Crowland Abbey 45, 47 
Croxton 61 
Crucks, crutches 35 
Crusade, crusaders 92, 93, 

96, 122 
Curtain walls 88 
Cymbeline 17 

D. 

Danes 55-7, 59, 61-2, 64 
Danish 74, 75 
Daub 35-7, 88 
Decurion, a Roman taxpayer 

26,32 
Denny Abbey 123 
Devil's Dyke 13 
Domesday Book 68, 90, 95 
Dominican Friars 125 
Domitian 28 
Donjon 87 
Dorsetshire 57 
Dorter 103-7 
Dowdiver's Lane 125 
Downing College 102 
Downs 1 1 

,, Berkshire 8 
Duddery 130 
Dykes 12,13,17,18,19,43 

E. 

Earl 74, 96 
„ Edwin 76 
„ Morkar 76 
„ Osbern 75 



East Anglia 3, 17, 41, 43, 

45, 50, 58 
Eboracum 29 
Eccleston, Thomas of 124 
Edmund Ironside 64 
Ednoth, Bishop 64 
Edward the Elder, son of 

Alfred 57, 58 
Edward the Confessor 68, 

74 
Egbert of Wessex 50, 51 
Ely 1, 44, 45, 47, 48, 61, 65 
„ Isle of 22, 48, 64 66, 75- 

86, 113 
„ Thomas of 77 
Empire, Holy Roman 134 
English 15, 34, 93, 96 
East 62, 64 

Ergastula, barracks for Ro- 
man slave -labourers 23 
Erkenwald, son of Anna 44 
Ermine Street 18, 22, 29, 33 

50 
Ethandune 57 
Ethelbert of Kent 41 
Etheldreda (St. Awdrey) 43, 

44,47,48, 115 
Ethelfled 58 
Ethelred 60 
Europe 5, 10, 129 
Everard de Beche 94 
Exchequer 117 
Exning 43 

F. 

Farm of the town 116 

Farmery 91, 111 

Fee-f arm of the town 1 1 8 



138 



INDEX 



Fens 13, 23, 41, 47, 50 

FenDitton 13 

Flanders, Flemish 47, 23, 

25, 45 
Fleam Dike 12,13 
Folkmoot (see Moot) 51 
Ford 5, 22, 36, 38 

„ Field 39 
Forum, a Roman market 

square 21, 23, 26 
France 16, 41, 72 
Franciscans 123-4 
Frank, French 41, 45, 75, 

80 
Frater 94, 103, 108 
Friars, Austin 115 

,, Minor 124-5 

„ White 125 

,, Dominican 125 

,, of St. Mary Magdalene 
122 

G. 

Galley 16, 21 
Garlic Fair 98 

„ Row 130 
Gatehouse 88, 94 
Gates of Cambridge 100 
Gaul 15, 21, 30, 32 
Germania, Germany 23, 25, 

37, 47, 48 
Gild of Thanes 68-72 

„ Merchants 119 
Girvii 42, 48 
Godesone 93 
Godmanchester 20, 22 
Godwin 74 
Gogs 5, 6, 18, 50 



Golden Dragon banner 64 

Goths 29 

Gownsmen 133 

Grainger 110 

Grant, Grantebrigge 62, 68-9. 

Grantchester 1 1 

Grey Friars 123 

Grimes Graves 6 

Grithow Field 39 

Groans of the Britons 32 

Guy 82 



H. 

Hadstock Way 100 
Hallelujah Victory 32 
Hardwicke 61 
Harold 74 

Hastings, Battle of 74 
Hayward 54 
Headland 54 
Helvetia 23 
Henry I. 48, 92-3, 97 

,, writ of 113 

„ II. 115 

„ III. 97, 125 

„ Frost 98 
Hereward the Wake 75-85, 

113 
Heriot 68, 95 
High Stone Cross 88 
Holy Land 93 

,, Sepulchre 95 
Hop Fair 130 
Horse Fair 130-1 
Hospital of St. John 98 
Hosteller 110 
House-penny 53 



INDEX 



139 



Hundred 58 
,, moot 52 
Huntingdon 88, 100 
Hypocaust 25 



Ickenham 50, 89 
Icknield Way 18 
Iceni 11, 15, 17-19, 27 
Impington 61 
Iona 47 
Ireland 32, 47 
Irish 8, 9, 46 
Iron Age 10 
Italy 23, 29, 52, 72 

J. 

Jarl 74 

„ Gyrth 74 
Jesus College 98 
Jews 96, 97 
John 94, 119-122 

K. 

Keep 37 
Kent 16, 57 
Kenwulf 57 
King's Ditch 100 

L. 

Lageman 57 
Landbeach 46 
Lay -brethren 112 
Lea river 57 
Legions 17, 18, 30 
Lepers 122, 127, 133 
Librarian 104 
Lichfield 49 



Lindisfarne 47 
Little Field 39 
Little St. Mary's 102 
Londinium, London 22, 30 

44, 95, 130-1 
Long Stanton 89 
Louver, Louvre 89 
Low Countries 134 



M. 

Magdalene College 39 
„ Bridge 51, 115 
„ Wharf 51, 100 
Maids' Causeway 102, 121 
Maldon, Battle of 59 
Mandeville, Galfrid de 99 
Mark 37 
Market Hill 51 
Matilda 99 
Mayor 125, 132 
Maypole 130 
Melbourne 13 
Merchant Gild 119 
Mercians 37-8, 41-2, 44, 50, 

53,64 
Merton Hall 22, 89 
Michaelmas 127, 129 
Middle Field 39 
Midsummer Eve 94 

„ Fair 122, 133 
Mill Lane 100 
Mills 100, 101 
Milne Street 100 
Minister of Barnwell 130 
Mint 68 
Moat 100 
Moot 52, 53, 57, 72 



140 



INDEX 



N. 

Nero 28 

Newmarket 13 

Newnham Elde Newenham 

39 
New Stone Age 6 
Norfolk 2, 6, 12, 37, 58 
Norman 48, 74-86, 89, 91, 

99, 113, 122, 123 
North Sea 47, 55 
Northumbria 44 
Norwich 131 
Novices 105 
Nunnery 98 

0. 

Old White Horse Inn 88 
Ostorius Scapula 18 
Ouse River 1, 3, 35, 77 
Outlaws 78, 84 
Owen 48 
Oxen 6, 25, 94 



Pain Peverel 92 
Parrot River 57 
Papworth 61 
Peas Hill 51 
Pembroke Street 100 
Penda 43, 44 
Peterborough 45, 47, 75 
Peterhouse 89 
Peverel 92, 93, 95 
Picts 30, 33 
Pilgrims' Way 50 
Pit -dwellings 4 
Pottery 6, 25 
Praetorium 26 
Precentor [see Librarian) 



Prolate 102-3 
Prior (see Prelate) 94 
Proctors 133 
Provost 103 
Processions 107, 127 

Q. 

Queens' College 89, 100 
Quire 104 

R. 

Ralph the Bearded 95 
Ramsey Abbey 44 
Raven banner 55 
Reach 14,77,113,133 
Redcoat 130 
Redwald 41 
Reeve 51, 55, 120 
Ridgeways 8, 12 
Ringmere, Battle of 61, 62 
Robert of Normandy 92 
Rogation Week Fair 120, 

127 
Rome 20, 30, 44, 84 
Roman 15, 17-19, 29-33, 
54-5 

„ Peace 22, 30 

,, Villa 133 note 
Round Church 95, 96 
Royston 3, 6 

s. 

Saint Andrew's Hill 51, 93, 

94, 121 
,, Anselm 98 
,, Atheldritha (see Ethel - 

dreda) 
„ Audrey (see Etheldreda) 

48 



INDEX 



141 



Saint Augustine 72 
„ Bartholomew's Day 127 
,, Benet's Church 68 
,, Brice's Church 61 
,, Edmund's Chapel 94 
„ Etheldreda 43, 44, 47, 48 
,, Felix of Burgundy 42 
„ Francis of Assisi 123 
„ Giles' Church 22, 91-4, 

99, 121 
„ Hilda 44 
„ Ives 58 

,, John Baptist's Eve 92 
,, Lawrence 124 
,, Mary's Chapel 50 
,, Mary Magdalene, the 

Friars of 122 
„ Patrick 32 
„ Paul 27-8 
„ Peter's Church 22,99 
„ Rhadegund 98 
„ Thomas' Leas 102 
Saracenic, of the Moslem 

Empire 64 
Saxon shore, coast of East 
Anglia 21, 29, 31, 33, 
41, 55, 72, 74 
Saxony, on the N.W. coast of 

Germany 47 
Scapula, Ostorius 27 
Scotale 120 

Scots, natives of Ireland 
during the Roman 
period 32 
Scotland, inhabited by 

Beakermen 10 
Seaxe, pi. seaxas, a Saxon 
dagger blade 34 



Sedrida, daughter of King 

Anna 44 
Saxburga, daughter of King 

Anna 44 
Sheriff 68, 100, 113, 115-6, 

118, 120 
„ Guy 83 
„ Picot 88, 91 
Sidney Sussex 96, 123 
Sigebert, second son of Red- 

wald 41 
Silchester, a great Roman 

Town 30 
Silver Street 95 
Siward Barn, a Saxon Noble 76 
Siwulf , Alderman of Kent 57 
Slaves, Roman 22 
Soham 42, 46, 65-6, 113 
Soler, a private room 89 
Stamford 33 
Stephen 98 
Stone users 8 
Stonehenge 8 
Stourbridge Fair 121-2, 127- 

133 
Suffolk 2, 6, 12, 34, 37-S 
Sub -prior 103 
Sumersham, Somersham 82 
Swallow, Hereward's mare 79 
Sweyn, Sweyne 61, 62, 75 
Synagogue 123 

T. 

Templars 95, 123 
Terra Sigillata 25 
Teuton 47 
Teversham 61 
Thames river 3, 11, 13, 17, 
35, 44, 56, 64 



142 



INDEX 



Thanes 68-72, 96 
Thatch, use of 4, 37, 88 
Thetford 56 
Thomas of Eccleston 124 

„ of Spain 124 
Thor, a Norse god 38, 43 
Thorney Abbey 45 
Thorold 75 
Three Tuns Inn 88 
Tithe 53 
Tithings 58 
Toft, a private enclosed piece 

of ground 37 
Toga, a Roman robe 26 
Tonbert 44 
Trumpington 51 

„ Gate 100, 102 

u. 

Uffing, name of a royal family 

of Angles 41 
Ulfcytel the Ready 62, 65 
University 133 

V. 

Vandlebury, a British and 
Roman Camp 18, 22 

Venta Belgarum, Roman name 
of Winchester, capital (a) 
of the Belgae, (6) of the 
West Saxons 30 

Via Appia, a Roman road in 
S. Italy 27 

Viking 57, 59, 60, 74 

Villa 21-4, 30, 33 

Vineyards 23, 33 q jL 

w. 

Wall, the North Wall 29, 30, 32 
Walloon, a tribe in Flanders 23 
Walsingham 50 



Wash 1,5,11,45 
Wards, High 96, 100 
Warden {see Prelate) 
Water beach 1, 46 
Watermerchants 71 
Watling Street, a Roman road 
from Kent to Chester, 
etc. 29, 57 
Wattle, hurdle work of twigs 

36, 88 
Way 3, 13, 49 
Wales 19, 32 
Welsh 69 
„ Marches, the frontier be- 
tween Wales and Eng- 
land 29 
Wessex 58, 64 
Whitby 44 
Wide Sea 30, 46, 71 
William I. 75, 78, 84-5 
„ ofEsseby 124 
„ of Malmesbury 96 
Willingham 78 
Winchester 30 
Winford 49 
Winwaed, Battle of, 655 a.d. 

43 
Witan 59 
Woden or Odin, Father of the 

Norse gods 38, 43 
Wolf Street Way 13 note 
Wood Ditton 14 
Worsted Street 13 
Wolves 53 
Wool Fair 130, 131 note 

Y. 

Yare river 35 

York, -shire 29, 56, 75, 124 



Printed by W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., Cambridge, England. 



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